Google has a solution for dealing with sites that exploit others through charging exorbitant fees to have unfavorable content removed.
After being alerted to such a site, Google’s Danny Sullivan took the opportunity to highlight the process in place for requesting to have pages removed from Google.
“If anyone feels a site has exploitative removal practices, they can submit to have pages reviewed and removed from Google. See the help page here; see how you would also fill out the form.”
If anyone feels a site has exploitative removal practices, they can submit to have pages reviewed and removed from Google. See the help page here; see how you would also fill out the form. https://t.co/5ZsKU0Bxbo pic.twitter.com/V11sBdvPJb
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) April 4, 2019
When submitting a request you must meet these requirements for Google to consider the content for removal:
- You are the subject of the content in the submitted URL,
- The website is not a business review site, and
- The website has removal practices that necessitate payment to have content removed.
If you believe you meet those criteria you can then fill out this form.
At the very least, before submitting the form, contact the webmaster first and ask about having content removed.
If they respond back and demand payment, then go ahead and use Google’s form as a last result.
In other words, don’t make it your first line of defense to submit Google’s form whenever you want unfavorable content deindexed from search results.
Similar to the disavow tool–a reasonable effort should be made to get the content removed by other means.
This should go without saying, but Google feels it’s worth reminding people that removal of a specific page from search results does not remove that page from the web itself.