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Don’t you want to remove news articles that have been taking a toll on your reputation, your revenue, your sales, your personal & professional life? It takes years for a company to build a rock-solid reputation and only a few days to tarnish it. It doesn’t seem fair to you, right? In fact, none wants to tarnish his or her reputation and let others take a toll on them.
But, this is quite possible that you wake up on a fine morning and find a negative news article ranking right on the top of Google. This brought a detrimental impact on people’s personal and professional life before yet for a majority of them still online reputation management is underrated.
However, if you’re here reading this article, it means you take your digital reputation on a serious note and want to take control of it. Right?
So, this blog pertains to the information on how to remove fake news from Google. But honestly, this guide will help you more to bury the negative news articles down on the second or third page of Google rather than removing it. Because it’s a hard nut to crack if you want to remove news articles from a high authority website.
So, let’s get started,
The Reasons Why Negative News Articles Rank High On Google
If you ask how long do news articles stay online?
The answer would be for an indefinite period. Unless you take action, these news articles won’t easily wipe out from the internet. In spite of your domain backed by years of experience, these news articles often rank above them.
Why?
This may seem quite baffling for many people. As in common sense, we know that Google prioritizes domain authority as a part of the ranking factor. Still, these websites outstand highly established websites of yours. This actually happens for a couple of reasons.
Let’s take a look at the following,
News Articles Comes in Trending
News articles are published on a more recent time than your website page or blog page. Google algorithm has always favored timely content. Therefore, a more recent story gets a higher authority in Google’s eye and rank higher on the search result. This is one of the main reasons why news articles often come at the top of the search results.
Topic Density
Google is not your supreme judge, who will conduct a meeting to hear out both party’s dictation and arrange the search result based on that. Even not only the keyword density matters here but also the topic or relevant search results matter a lot. For instance, if you type “idiot” on the search bar, you’ll notice the content of the U.S president trump. Does that mean, Google believes he is an idiot? No, it’s just that people or news websites have written enough content on the same.
Therefore, if a high authority website starts talking negatively about your brand, there is a higher chance of those articles to take the first place in the search result. Eventually, if more people start to discuss the same, then Google will feature more negative news articles on your brand name.
Number of Clicks
Due to the human psyche, we tend to focus more on the negative results than the positive. So, the number of clicks on negative articles is always higher than that of positive ones. Researchers have also identified the psychological role played with negative content. This phenomenon drives people to seek unfavorable news articles.
So, negative content gets more views, clicks, engagement than positive content. And as per Google’s #1 ranking factor, the number of clicks gets the highest priority. It literally means that if the article is getting more clicks, it’s more likely to stay on the first page only.
Domain Authority
Domain authority is another ranking factor in Google. Even according to the latest concept of google, EAT is something you can’t overlook if you want to rank your site on the top. And here A represents authority. So, the more authority the website has, the more are the chances for the website to rank high.
News related websites trusted highly by Google, therefore, a majority of them hold high domain authority and rank high on Google.
Social Media Share
With the rise of social media, content is shared more often than before. So, any content that contains unfavorable or crispy information, users tend to share them all over social media. As a result, the post becomes viral.
Nothing gets such an instant priority in Google’s eye than viral content. It ranks on the top within a matter of a few hours and your activities will be all over the internet. Even though you’re purely innocent, Google will still prioritize the content unless you know the hacks to remove negative news articles from there.
Why Should You Remove News Articles from Google?
Most of these negative news articles will be on the web for an indefinite period. Unless you take legit action, the chances of repairing your reputation become absolute zero. The major problem here is that people are mostly unaware of such a scenario. Most of the time, they find out a negative news article by someone else. This actually makes the problem worse. If you don’t start taking action right after the post is published, you’re messing with your online reputation.
So, we recommend online reputation management tools to use so that brands get instant notification when someone posts negative news articles on them. And if you’re thinking this won’t cause any significant damage, then we’ll be covering up the unavoidable reasons to remove old newspaper articles from Google here.
- Negative news doesn’t only damage a brand reputation but it simultaneously hurts its sales, strategic partnerships, and hiring process. Research says that around 69% of employees won’t apply in companies hurdling with reputation issues.
- You’ll be building up a negative association around your brand name which will do more harm than anything. Like, see the example,
- It damages your integrity in the corporate world. As a result, the employee retention rate will see a major drop-down.
- It hinders you while making a long-lasting relationship with your brand. So, you’ll miss out on golden opportunities which were supposed to be yours but one negative news article can be enough for the blunder.
- Aside from professional life, this actually damages your personal life too. You may get frustrated seeing the outrage of people in the digital platforms which further ruins your personal life as well.
How to Remove an Article From Google: 3 Proven Hacks to Remove Negative Information
In most cases, it’s really a hard nut to crack if you want to remove news articles permanently from the internet. This is because journalists and news websites owners are under no obligation to remove your information. Unless you prove the information to be illegal or contains private information.
However, being an online reputation management agency and having worked with brands with their reputation issues, we have these proven hacks set for you to remove negative news articles from the search result page. So, let’s start the discussion.
Contact the Website Owner
Though there are very few chances that the website owner will remove the information but that doesn’t imply that you shouldn’t try. Especially if the site contains falsified information, you can present all the proofs for yourself and contact the owner. Some may charge a hefty fee to remove the content but anyway you should not off-guard this way. This is also called a complete removal process. If the site owner agrees to remove the page, then it will appear like this.
Here are some few steps to keep in check while contacting the publisher,
- Be extremely polite while talking to. Remember this is the best way to conduct a complete removal process. So, don’t abuse and ruin the situation.
- Email is the best format to reach out to these publishers. So, always consider contacting via mail rather than message or call.
- Don’t threaten them as the situation can be worse if you try to showcase your power.
Contact the Author
If you’ve tried your luck on step one, and still nothing worked, then it’s time to test your luck on the second step- contacting the author. Still, it’s extremely rare that the author will remove the content but there is no chance to ward off the step. Maybe the author agrees to delete the information, who knows! Right?
Follow some of the basic points while contacting the author,
- Always check the byline and reach out to the exact author who wrote the piece of the negative news article.
- Don’t leave a message as people are involved in constant activities so it’s better to reach out via phone or email.
- Follow up with the author with a polite mail after you told him all about the disruption you’re facing because of the one negative news and that’s too fake.
- Hold on to your calm and cool nature rather than being aggressive.
Make sure you leave a personal touch while talking to them. This always helps in removing a negative article from the internet but it’s a tireless process. So, don’t lose your cool. However, you can always reach out to a professional online reputation management company to handle a negative reputation to get faster results.
Turning On the Suppression Method
If by any chance publishers or authors have not yet removed your negative news article from the internet, then it’s time to turn on the suppression method. And even they delete the article, it really could still remain in Google.
That’s because Google bots will still craw those pages and it takes time for google to index them even after removing the pages. So, the alternative best way to get rid of the negative vibe on the digital platform is to suppress them on a deeper level. Because none will land on to the second page of search results. Right?
Technically this is called the “search engine suppression” method which involves constructing masterpieces of positive content and rank them higher on Google. It also strengthens your brand image in the eyes of Google so in a way suppression actually can work pretty well to promote positivity around the internet.
Here are the few best methods that we follow in order to suppress those negative content down in the search results;
- Set up web 2.0 profiles and actively posting on them.
- Starting the company’s blog and post quality content optimized for bots.
- Publish press releases on websites with higher DA than that of the website where the negative news article is posted.
- Optimizing previous content and social media profiles.
Conclusion: How to Remove a Negative Article from Google?
This is high time you rebuild your online reputation in order to stay afloat on this game. Instead of applying random techniques, it’s time to place a strategy in the right place by the right person. Online reputation building is no more a piece of a cake-walk in this digitally-driven world.
You need to delve deep into thorough analysis, content creation, diversification, and SEO tactics to yield the desired fruit fall. As a result of our incessant endeavor, brands already surge to page one and bring down the negative results automatically.
Some of our brand or business reputation management strategies involve;
- Creating social handles and being active on it.
- Setting up a website to create a strong virtual presence.
- Starting up the company’s blog.
- Optimizing the content for the better.
- Showcasing expertise on the field.
- Building a strong bond with the competitors in the industry.
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