How one can take away info from Google search outcomes
Information is timeless. We live in a world where data never disappears. Years ago something hit the local newspaper, it was popular for a few days, and then it was gone.
If you take a wrong step today, it can create tremendous ripple in your business.
There are many reasons you might want to remove information from Google. Having inaccurate, problematic, or outdated information about you or your business online can affect the performance of your website and damage your reputation.
In this article, I'm going to cover everything you need to know so that you can manually remove information from Google. instead of waiting for them to do it for you.
When should you remove information from Google Search?
You may find information about you on Google that doesn't belong there for some reason. There are several reasons why this can happen, and most of them are harmless.
It is still important that you get this information from the internet so that nobody gets the wrong idea.
Here are four possible situations that may apply to you. If you find that any of these elements are resonating, you'll want to get that data from Google asap.
punishment Remove information from Google
Many wonder if Google will penalize you for certain things like bad links, keyword stuffing, and seedy black hat strategies. The fact that quality content always outperforms the competition is proof that it is important to follow white hat strategies.
Even if you didn't want to, you may have links from websites designed to create links or content that is less than "desirable". If so, you want to remove or replace them.
For low quality links from spam websites or websites that are unrelated to it, Google should exempt them. I will go into this further below. If you have too many "bad" links, it will warn Google that you are using black or gray hat link strategies and you may be penalized for doing so.
Remove outdated information from Google
Times change, we change, and information changes. Maybe you wrote about pop culture a few years ago and ended up placing a lot of high quality articles in the niche.
Now you're trying to get perceived as a digital marketer, but every time people look you up on Google, your old content takes over via celebrity gossip.
While this isn't necessarily a "problem", it is out of date information that no longer applies to you. It doesn't show who you are, what you represent, or what you want people to know about you.
Some examples aren't even that complicated. Perhaps you own a restaurant and a popular website that displays menus of restaurants has an outdated version of your menu on their website.
As a result, people keep calling or coming to your company and expecting that something will only be disappointed if you don't have the item on your online menu.
Instead of having to explain yourself over and over again, you can have Google remove this menu and replace it with the updated version.
Misinformation
In some cases the information is not out of date. it's just wrong. This can happen for a variety of reasons.
A company database may be reporting the wrong hours of operation for you, so people keep getting frustrated when they can't reach you because you're closed.
Nowadays there is also great distrust of data, so it is even possible that a news network or an online outlet has published incorrect information about you. While it might not be harmful, you still want to remove it because it is incorrect.
Potentially harmful information
The worst scenario is that there is harmful and sensitive information about you online. You may have a message from a local news network with your name and photo, or your personal information was somehow leaked online.
Although the story was six years ago, anyone who tries to see you will find this information.
Unfortunately, such information persists, but sometimes it is false or defamatory. If so, you may be able to remove it.
A competitor may be spreading false information or even stealing content from you. If you feel that things like this are not happening, think again.
Regardless of your reason, learning to remove information from Google is possible, but it does take a bit of work.
Ways to Remove Information from Google Search
Before I even start removing information, we need to learn what we are removing and if it's worth it.
The first thing you want to do is do a review of your company and see what it shows.
When I put Neil Patel Digital into Google I can see that the first results are business pages and stories from the blog.
Great!
As we go down, I see Glassdoor reviews of working at Neil Patel Digital and they're mostly positive, which is good too. Even if I move down to the next page, things are mostly going well.
Next, let's review the image results. The images I see are accurate, make sense of the brand and shed a positive light on the business. All is well. However, this may not be the case.
Let's look at six different ways you can remove or change incorrect information on Google.
deny request
Disabling a link occurs when you instruct Google not to use the link when crawling your website. You're probably thinking, "Why would I ever want to do this?"
You want to do this if for some reason your website has poor quality links. Perhaps you hired an agency that didn't understand how to link, or you have some outdated links from old school strategies.
Either way, you'll want to use Google's disavow feature to exempt this link so that Google doesn't penalize you for poor quality links.
According to some experts, the disavow tool is no longer necessary as Google ignores low quality links anyway. They don't necessarily get punished so don't even care about them.
However, others believe that Google will still penalize users for poor quality links as the algorithm does this automatically.
This should be your last resort if you think your traffic has leveled off and you've exhausted all other options.
So how do you do that
First you need to find the bad links. If this sounds like a lot of work, it's because it is. Fortunately, we have tools to help us with this. I recommend SEMRush's backlink audit tool, which offers temporary access with a free trial if you don't have an account.
You go into the dashboard, go to the backlink check and look for root domain.
Depending on the size of your website, you should get your results in around 10 minutes.
SEMRush marks how toxic each link is, and you can export a file with any broken links, upload it, and use the tool in the search console to start disabling them.
Removing copyright information from Google Request
If you have rights to intellectual material, it is against Google's Terms of Use for someone else to take this information and post it on their website. It's also against the Terms of Use for them to claim ownership of something that doesn't belong to them.
This policy may apply to some of the following:
- Plagiarized blog posts
- Business processes protected by copyright
- Product information and data
- Patented products and services
To do this, see the Legal Help section under Removing content from Google. You select which product the query relates to and from there select the specific problem.
You can report malware, remove personal data, intellectual property, and more.
Overall, the process seems very straightforward, and Google even states that it investigates and eliminates copyright infringement, counterfeiting, or trademark issues within six hours.
Replace bad content with high quality content
Since the update of the Google Panda algorithm in 2011, the search engine has put more emphasis on accurate and high quality information. They try to prevent subpar information from reaching users and they keep updating the platform, making the quality of your content more important.
How do we determine what is or is not bad content?
Like everything else, Google interprets it for us!
Here's a quick rundown of what you might want to replace:
- Content with ads with grotesque images
- Content without a direct audience
- Content without purpose
- When there is no information about the creator
- Unmaintained websites
- Content that encourages hate
- Content that promotes harm
- Content from authors with a bad reputation
- Misleading content
The next question is, what should this content be replaced with? Google answers that for us too.
Your content should be useful, informative, valuable, believable, and engaging. It should also show expertise, authority and trust.
Go to your website and look for content that consistently performs worse, doesn't attract links, and doesn't convert. This is the content that you might want to replace altogether.
If you have content that isn't ranked but still has traffic, it may need to be updated. Update the information and make sure everything is still valid in the current area.
Update metadata
Your metadata is the information that appears when you come up on Google. If pages have been running for an extended period of time, you may want to update this information because the original data may no longer be correct.
The method you use to do this depends on what site building platform you're using, but most make it incredibly easy.
For example, in WordPress you need to install a plugin like Yoast. Once you do just go to the left side or the Post tab, scroll down and update the snippet.
It may take a few days for Google to crawl the website again. Once it does, you'll have your updated metadata.
Google is showing the wrong metadata
One of the most frustrating things is when Google refuses to show the correct meta descriptions. Even if you spell them correctly and update the correct fields, sometimes Google will still take a snippet of your website.
There are a few reasons this can happen:
- Your source code is wrong
- The cache is out of date
- They just ignored it
Typically, this problem is fixed by correcting your source code to include a description meta tag. If that doesn't work, try the following method to update your cache.
Use tools to speed up your website's Google cache
As mentioned earlier, Google doesn't always apply your changes immediately. If you find that they are taking too long and you don't want to wait, there are a few things you can do manually.
First of all, you can request indexing by going into your Google Search Console.
Select your website from the search property and expand the "Coverage" section. Once you've done this, you should see your "last crawl" date.
Click Test Live URL. If everything is fine, you will be asked if the page has changed and can request indexing. This speeds up the process and ensures that only the most current and accurate information is displayed on Google.
Conclusion
All of this may seem a little intimidating, but it's not as hard as it looks.
First, do a simple audit. What do you get when you put your business or name on Google? If it's not good, then follow some of the steps to get this information off Google.
Next, perform an audit on your site. Look for content and pages that are underperforming and see if any of the reasons above are the culprit. You can also hire my SEO team to do this for you.
This can improve your reputation and SEO, which ultimately leads to more money in your pocket.
Have you ever found something that is seriously damaging your online business? If so what was it?