How to remove negative search results in Google? [After testing 6 years and spend more than USD 30K]

Ringo

熱愛研究網路行銷、網賺了7年，開辦了首個收費廣東話 SEO 課程。現專注研究搜尋引擎優化! 深信 BE FAST or Be LAST，故是狂野時速粉 !

Negative search results are believed to be what most companies want to avoid. After all, you spend a lot of money to promote your company. However, as long as the searcher finds a negative search result, your advertising performance may greatly decline. As mentioned, a bad comment may require 10+ good comments to be completely compensated.

For instance, when someone search for a “pet shop”, followed by a series of “xxx pet shop scam”, “xxx pet shop cheating”

Do you think that person will consider buying things from this particular pet shop?

Most people tend to read negative content first. With the above example, no matter how many positive news ‘xxx pet shop’ might have, I will go to the “scam”, 9 out of 10 people who are interested in your products will never consider your product again. It is really difficult to gain back the trust from the visitors.

After handling different cases (we have dealt with these cases and successfully hidden or removed links; including links from various daily newspapers, discussion forums, etc.), and based on knowledge of Google, it isn’t rocket science.

In the following article, I am going to be sharing the methods I have elaborately used previously. Some of these methods are considered to be unethical. hese methods will break the law. We will begin with the most suggested approach.

Why is it so difficult to remove content from Google?

Google’s focus is on finding the best answers and finding what information that visitors will be interested in!

And humanity tells us that what we most like to watch is

This explains why news is always full of negativity, and the same applies for Google.

Every day, Google observes what contents are most appealing, what the most attractive title is, what search results will make people more engaging, and what the highest click-through rate Title is. (Click rate is one of the factors that improve ranking)

How not to let Google discover you?

It doesn’t mean Google will not regulate content; they will also monitor and handle. Let’s elaborate on how Google does it

The white-hat approach

First and foremost, Google clearly stated that because they do not analyse who is right and who is wrong, they will embark on the initiative to investigate, or change the search results because of someone’s opinion. Therefore, Google will not change the search results unless there are certain special circumstances involved.

IF YOU CAN’T GET THE CONTENT REMOVED FROM THE ORIGINAL SITE, YOU PROBABLY WON’T BE ABLE TO COMPLETELY REMOVE IT FROM GOOGLE’S SEARCH RESULTS, EITHER. INSTEAD, YOU CAN TRY TO REDUCE ITS VISIBILITY IN THE SEARCH RESULTS BY PROACTIVELY PUBLISHING USEFUL, POSITIVE INFORMATION ABOUT YOURSELF OR YOUR BUSINESS. – GOOGLE WEBMASTER

Listed below are some of the conditions or circumstances Google will consider removing from their search results (visible for some personal data will be protected):

Government identification number issued by the government, such as identity card number
Bank account number
Credit card number
Signature picture

However, the following personal data will not be accepted﹕

User’s birthday
User’s address
User’s phone number

Basically any negative search results related to business will not be considered.

First look at a real situation:

The complainant is the copyright owner of the goods, but some people illegally sell their products in yahoo, blogs and other auction sites.

They have contacted the relevant auction site, and the auction site immediately removed that listings for the complainant, and then the auction site no longer has their company’s products.

But when the complainant execute a Google search, he can find the Yahoo Shopping Center page of the product.

“How can I remove the URL from Google search result?” one may ask

The most efficient way to do this is to contact the webmaster of the negative page owner (the above example is the auction site) and remove the content from the original page.

You can first inquire from the webmaster if they can help in removing that page. In several cases, the webmasters will not respond, and some companies will issue a lawyer’s letter requesting removal.

However, this method should be approached with caution, because it most definitely has a high chance of leading to a public relations disaster. Why?

Imagine if these webmasters actually use the ‘xxx company’ to use money to bully a small website owner on Facebook or in a discussion forum. What are the consequences of such?

The Grey Hat Approach

SEO is pushing the website to the forefront of the search results; there is a push up, so in theory, there should also be a push down. The SEO industry calls these methods Negative SEO.

Negative SEO’s approach is easy to understand, which is a violation of Google’s quality website code, which makes Google feel like the site is actually cheating their algorithm and then penalizes it, in order to push the site down or even remove it totally from the search results.

SEO companies often use Negative SEO in conjunction with authentic SEO website optimization to solve problems for customers. On one hand, SEO companies perform some Negative SEO operations on negative news websites, and on the other hand, they use SEO to push positive or positive-related friendly websites.

Spammy Backlink – One of the most common methods is to create an unreasonably high number of backlinks on those negative news websites. The numbers can skyrocket to several millions. If you visit Fiverr, you will see that many sellers only charge you $5.
Email Attack – This method entails sending out tens of thousands of emails containing links to your website to unknown users, so that Google feels that you spam others and consequently punishes your website.
Copy Content – This is also common, mainly by copying your website content and then re-posting it in different places, or using a software to generate web 2.0 websites that are exactly the same content as yours, so that search engines think that your website has spam people intentionally.

The above is an observation of a website’s backlink in February. You will notice about 500 to 1000 links is been added into the site every day, and lose 1,000 to 3,000 backlink per day. This is a very abnormal situation, and we can expect a great opportunity that the site is being attacked.

This grey method is legal but you must keep observing constantly, because sometimes it can only push down the search results, not necessarily removing it, and its time consuming. It is most likely that the maintenance fee will be paid monthly.

The Black hat way of removing Negative Search Result (Not Recommended)

As named, which means that the method may not be legal, and I did hear that someone did it.

Hacking – This approach is to find hackers, mainly to enter the content of the negative website to change the content, and then stop Google’s spider (crawler) from finding the site; but Hacking is illegal.
DDoS –The trick is to use DDoS to attack the server, so that one page of the website can’t be displayed, and is finally removed from the search results.

Remove outdated content

Besides negative news, there is chance that old content is stilled indexed by Google after website revamp. In this situation, you can simply ask Google to remove outdated content in Google search console.

Manual Removal of Content by Google

If the content is in violation of the law, you can appeal to Google. If successful, the search results will then be removed.

One example I executed recently is to lay complaint to Google that a third party copied their online courses and sold them online.

After complaining to Google, the search results were then removed by Google. due of legal issues, Google will put the complainant’s application into the neutral agency Lumen for reference:

Here’s a detailed outline of situations you can appeal to Google, but it doesn’t necessarily guarantee success:

I would like to report malware, phishing or other similar issues.
The webmaster has removed a portion of the content that I think is problematic, but this particular content still appears in search results.
I noticed malicious behavior on the site
One or more pages on my site were removed due to legal complaints from others, and I want to restore them.
I want to remove my personal information from Google search results.
I have questions about knowledge maps or knowledge panel cards
I have questions about Google My Business (comments, Q&A, and business listings).
I have other legal issues

Using the example of the above copyright, we executed the removal procedure in accordance with the valid copyright notice under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and successfully removed the content in just about one month, but the searcher was performing a search.

The following prompt appears at the bottom of the search results.

What to do when you see negative search results

Don’t be too anxious when negative search results pop up, most especially if negative search results are coming from news sites.
In most cases, when the news comes out, because most news sites have higher authority, Google will put this news in a higher position, but most of them will be disappeared within 3 – 4 weeks.
Assuming your company is in a legal lawsuit, and you expect to have more reports, it is recommended that you wait until the event is completely over, because the new news or information will push the old information altogether.

How much to remove content from Google?

There is no fixed amount. After all, every company has their different methods, because some of them are outsourced to other countries.

Depending on the difficulty of pushing down or removing, some companies charge monthly, with an average of HK$5,000 – 8,000, and companies with HK 30,000 to 50,000 in terms of the number of links involved.

How much time is required to remove content from Google?

Based on experience, the entire working time depends on the strength of the link to be removed or pushed down and the number of searchers as well.

The following is my report based on my observation:

Ordinary blog or blog: about 30 – 40 days
Discussion Forum: about 30 – 50 days
News website: 60 – 90 days

The above is only applicable to webpages that aren’t currently in an active state. But, if the forum keeps on adding new messages and the news is constantly updated, it will take much longer.

How to choose online reputation company?

There is a service called Online Reputation Management, and is sometimes referred to as online public relations. It began rising a few years ago, and today it is already a big market.

Their job is to help customers making good impressions online, such as educating customers on how to respond to negative comments and how to strategically join positive reviews.

A More advanced method is being able to remove the Google Instant Result, so that all search results are more positive.

The strategy adopted by most companies rely on the creation of a large amount of positive information in an attempt to overshadow negative search results.

“…is to use SEO technology to optimize positive information on the first page, and then push the negative news on the first page to the second page.

Simply put, our SEO industry will apply all available resources on the network. (Website, blog, forum), help customers build 10-30 new network materials, and then use these SEO technologies to optimize the first page of the search engine, because the first page has only 10 data. So in a limited ranking position, we can exclude negative news after the second page.”

I have attempted to research and contact these companies. There are also quite a number of experiences of deceit I have encountered

Beware of Indian Reputation Management Company

A good number of service providers is from India, even if it proclaims the company is based in the United States.

I don’t know why most of them come from India. The methods these Indians use are similar. They create a lot of English websites, and then use SEO technology to push positive information up.

And the most important issue:

Ask them about their practices. Some companies use Hacker to go to the server of the target website to remove content. This is illegal. Be careful.

European and American network reputation Management Company

There is a law in Europe that protects personal privacy. Individuals can call Google directly to remove results:

All you have to do is fill out the form and wait for Google’s approval:

One thing to be reminded of is that this legislation is limited to search engine results in Europe. Even if your content is removed in Europe, the results will still appear in Asia. When you choose these companies, this is not to be ignored.

Summary

I rarely recommend my service in blogs, but the job of removing search results is not something that ordinary people or beginners can handle, and there are too many scammers in this job market.

If, eventually, you have negative search results. Contact us, we have a complete working certificate and all information is absolutely confidential.