A Look at Google’s Webpage Removal Request Tool
Online Reputation Management July 18th. 2008, 1:17pmImagine that one day, you are shocked to find your business name listed on a pornographic / adult spam page. Or someone has posted as copy of your driver's license or social security number on a website for revenge. Or what if you search for something harmless in Google Images... and find a deeply disturbing, xxxx-rated picture?
Asking Google to Remove Negative Links
Google offers a little-known service called the Webpage Removal Request Tool.
This tool allows you to request the removal of certain types of pages from its search index. Anyone with a Gmail / Google account can request that an offensive or "dead" page be removed. Google says they will personally consider all requests, and they will notify you when (and if) a page is removed.
Google tries hard not to play judge or arbitrator; they give you the burden of trying to contact the webmaster and and asking her remove the negative information, first. If the Webmaster agrees to remove the offensive information (lucky you!), you can then follow up with Google's Webpage Removal Request Tool to make sure the cache of the old version gets wiped out of Google's index.
If you are unable to contact the Webmaster or get them to cooperate in taking the bad information down, Google lists 4 kinds of web pages that they will consider hand-editing right out of their index. Pages that contain:
- Your social security or government ID number
- Your bank account or credit card number
- An image of your signature
- Your full name or the name of your business appearing on an adult content site that's spamming Google's search results.
are all eligible to be manually deleted from Google's index.
Even though those are the explicit criteria Google asks for, it wouldn't hurt to ask for the removal of any very offensive or defamatory page using this tool. Google is unlikely to give you much free tech support for your online reputation, but at the very least someone with the power to take action is likely to take a look at it.
Explore this tool and let me know what you find out about it in the comments below!
Bonus: Hardcore Reputation Management Tactic According to Todd Friesen, if you find that a defamatory or negative page goes offline for ANY reason (such as server or DNS issues) - you can request that the page be deleted as a "dead or outdated" page with the Webpage Removal Request Tool. If it stays offline long enough while the request is reviewed, it will be removed from Google's index for 6 months.
July 20th, 2008 at 3:43 pm
Like the post. Curious as to how responsive Google is with these requests.
July 21st, 2008 at 10:27 am
Hayden,
Glad you liked the post. Thanks for reading and leaving your comments!
To answer your question, I have requested that Google remove legitimately “dead” pages with this tool and it was gone within 3 days - marked as removed. A client had success removing “Adult content spam pages” that contain his businessname - so they DO respond to these.
August 4th, 2008 at 2:34 am
Can we send a request to remove a post that is giving wrong information about our company and also at the end of that post the webmaster had appologized for the wrong information?
August 4th, 2008 at 8:00 am
Shilpa,
Yes, I believe you can do this.
The Webpage Removal Request Tool has an option that says:
“The site owner has modified this page so that it no longer contains the information or image that concerns me.”
This way, if the webpaster has removed the incorrect information and apologized to you about it, this should (hopefully) expedite Google to remove the OLD copy of the page from the search results. Soemtimes just the description that shows up in the search results can be very harmful.
I think that Google aims to avoid being the “content police” and asks you to try and resolve matters with the webmaster. The won’t edit stuff out of the index (except for adult spam, signatures) - but if the webmaster has changed the information, they will hurry up and make their search results reflect changes (to the page title, content, description).
Hope this answers your question / helps!
August 4th, 2008 at 6:52 pm
You could also try resubmitting the page to Google or getting a couple of backlinks to the updated page to get them to reindex it.
August 6th, 2008 at 9:36 am
Hayden,
Good advice. If you got some links and filled out this Google tool, I think it would be your best shot.
August 10th, 2008 at 7:03 am
Hi Brett. Thanks for this tool. We’ve never used it but it looks interesting!
August 11th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
Thank you as always Brett! I appreciate your insight!
August 17th, 2008 at 8:21 pm
Parken,
Google doesn’t publicize this tool very much, but it’s good to know about.
Mark,
You know quite a lot about ORM and I appreciate your insights, too.
September 8th, 2008 at 10:37 pm
hey brett; i have the exact same problem of getting a lot of adult spam results when i search for my own name. i submitted a request two weeks ago, but I haven’t received any follow-up e-mails yet. i would really appreciate it if you could tell me how long the process took for your client who had business/adult spam. thanks!
September 20th, 2008 at 1:11 pm
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October 21st, 2008 at 7:16 am
I am also having this problem. I used to model professionally and I have had countless people steal my images and post them along with my full name on adult sites. The images aren’t harmful but the sites and descriptions are. I submitted a removal request yesterday and was wondering how long this usually takes?