Have you been losing sleep because negative reviews and content are posted on Google about you or your business? Many people out there are facing the same problem and often hire online reputation management services to help, but the results are rarely good. Removing negative content on Google is almost impossible for those who do not understand the way Google works. Doing such services requires a lot of time, inquiries from Google, and costs.

Here are more details on how to get rid of negative content from Google

• You can go to Google directly and request them to remove the negative content if the negative reviewer refuses to take down the content. But know that Google cares more about facts and less about personal stories that cause disputes. If it is about removing a slanderous and illegal content about you or your business, Google might remove it, though most often it does not.

• You can as well contact the site hosting the negative content and request them nicely to get ride of it. However, they will hardly just remove it, but one never knows. A site like thedirty.com even makes it worse by posting some removal requests from those they posted bad reviews about. Often, they demand a removal fee, which seems like extortion. As of now, no law outlaws such a practice in Australia.

• Go for legal action though it is the most expensive approach to take since it involves hiring a reputation management firm. Understand that you can’t sue the website itself in this case because of the Communication Decency Act Section 230, which shields third party sites from liability on things others post. You can only sue the site if the negative content was posted by the owner. Suing the poster is, therefore, your best legal action to take which can result in a court order for the content to be taken down if you win.

• Also, you can release a number of Press Release statements to knock off the impact of that negative content. A popular site may notice your rebuttal and weigh in positively.

If you do not get good results with any of the approaches above, try pushing down the negative reviews by creating more positive content about you or your business. You can do that by creating positive reviews on websites, social media profiles, and blog posts and employ SEO so that they can rank higher than the negative content.