As a result of technological advancement, the internet has become a major source of information for most individuals. Nowadays, live news streaming such as this website, online newspaper articles, and social media posts are a few of the ways to get information about an individual or business.
As such, every business or individual needs to maintain positive images on the internet. Sadly, for many reasons, there may be a negative newspaper article about you or your business on Google search results. Therefore, whenever people are searching for anything related to your business, they are likely going to see the negative newspaper article.
As the name indicates, a negative newspaper article gives you a bad image. So, a lot of people and businesses will doubt your credibility based on the level of negativity written about you in the newspaper article.
Fortunately, you don’t have to allow such a negative newspaper article continue to dent your image on Google search results as there are tons of things you can do to deal with such a situation. Take the time to read this post and learn about how you can handle it.
What are the options available for handling a negative newspaper article?
Let’s get started by considering the various options for dealing with a negative newspaper article on Google search results.
1. Get in touch with owner or editor and let them remove it
If you have a negative newspaper article on Google search results, Google has advised that you should speak to the editor or owner of the newspaper first. By contacting the administrator, editor or owner of the newspaper, you can come to an agreement on how the article can be removed. However, this option does not usually produce any good outcomes. This is so for a few reasons which include:
- The majority of the administrators, editors or owners of the newspaper are difficult to find. Consequently, you may not even get a chance to speak to the person that is capable of removing the negative newspaper article about you or your business.
- Most administrators are often unwilling or reluctant to entertain the idea of removing an already published newspaper article on their website. As a matter of fact, many of them will not give you an audience once they have known your request.
- Also, it may be difficult in some cases to prove that the negative things that they have written against you or your business are not true.
Apart from the total removal of the article, you can convince the news public to redact you or your business from the article. Redaction means that the newspaper will remove your name from the article. Nevertheless, the administrator will likely agree to this request if you or your business is not the major subject of the article. Also, they may agree if you or your business was the victim in the story.
Generally, don’t shy away from trying this option. Nevertheless, you should not put your hope in it to avoid being disappointed.
2. File a legal request for the removal of such a negative newspaper article
The second option you can explore is to file a legal removal request. The court can order the newspaper to remove the negative newspaper article that has been published about you or your business on Google search results. Nonetheless, to avoid wasting your time and money, you should endeavor to speak to an attorney before you start the process.
Primarily, you need to have a strong reason before the newspaper can be ordered to remove the article. For the article to be removed, one of these two conditions must apply:
- The newspaper article was copied from another source that has an entirely different copyright owner.
- The newspaper article has information that you can prove as defamatory and false.
If your request fulfills any of these two conditions, you rest assured that the court will order the article to be removed. However, in the majority of the situations, individuals that want to remove the article do not meet any of the conditions. Resultantly, the article will continue to stay on Google search results.
3. Hire the services of an online reputation management team
If the first two options fail, the third and most effective option to handle a negative article is hiring the services of an online reputation management team. With the help of online reputation management services, the negative newspaper article will not appear on Google search results; hence, it will not be able to damage your online reputation.
How an online reputation management team handles negative newspaper articles
It is worthwhile to realize that online reputation management teams employ different ways to deal with the problem. Sometimes, they may take actions that will ensure that the article is removed totally from Google search results. If they cannot remove the article, the company can find a means to hide the negative content.
In some other situations, the online reputation team will find a way to suppress the article; hence, it will not appear early search results; therefore, people will not be seeing it again. This is sometimes done in the form of de-indexing. The suppression usually works by pushing the article down the Google search results. Since most individuals don’t look beyond the first two pages of the results, any article that does not appear in those pages will not be seen or read by most people. Hence, the effects of the negative newspaper article will be reduced significantly.
Furthermore, there are tons of teams providing this particular service. Hence, you will have no problem with finding a team that can help you.
In conclusion, you should realize that handling a negative newspaper article on Google search results requires a logical and fool-proof plan. Don’t let the anger of seeing such an article push you into taking an irrational action that will put you or your business into a more complicated position. Make sure that you take every rational step after due consideration.
