How To Remove News Articles About An Arrest from Google and the Internet 

Imagine being able to Google yourself without fear or anxiety. Imagine reclaiming your name and reputation, free from the shadow of damaging online content. Picture meeting new colleagues or friends, confident that they haven’t stumbled upon negative articles about you. At Katherine O’Brien Law, we specialize in making this a reality. We understand how deeply online arrest records and misleading articles can affect your life, from job opportunities to personal relationships. Our expert team is dedicated to removing harmful content from the Internet, restoring your peace of mind and allowing you to move forward without the constant worry of your past haunting you.

Reclaim Your Online Reputation with Katherine O’Brien Law

One unfortunate byproduct of newspapers going digital is that online arrest records are now published online. Moreover, what is published online usually stays online forever – for all to easily see. Sometimes these articles can appear years after the charges are filed due to the news archive recently being digitized. What’s worse, some of these articles are misleading or even inaccurate.

While newspapers can report the details of arrests, they are under no legal obligation to update or remove these stories, even after the criminal charges have been dismissed and/or expunged. Obviously, it’s not very useful to have your criminal record cleared when the original charges top your Google search results. 

News articles about arrests can have devastating impacts on people’s lives. They can not only cause people to lose jobs, careers, and livelihoods but also strain and sever relationships with family, friends, and significant others. At Katherine O’Brien Law, we understand how damaging these articles can be.  

Many believe there is no way to remove these articles, but this is not true.  In fact, at Katherine O’Brien Law, unless we successfully remove or deindex your news article, you owe us no fee. 

Important Removal Tip! It is important not to google your name and then click on the negative news articles. Every time you or someone else does this, it tells Google that the negative news article is relevant, and Google thereby increases the ranking of that article, meaning it will increase the article’s position in the search engine results page. Thus, rather than googling and clicking on the article, keep the direct URL of the article saved and only access the article by clicking on the direct URL. 

At Katherine O’Brien Law, we help clients remove content from the Internet nationwide. Thus, we can help regardless of where you are located in the United States.

Understanding Your Options for Removing Court Records

There is a lot of misinformation on the internet regarding the removal of news articles relating to arrests. Thus, before hiring a removal service or lawyer to represent you, it is important that you fully understand your options.   

If an online newspaper publishes your arrest, you generally have three options, each of which is discussed below. 

1. Complete Removal/Unpublishing

Hands down, the best solution is to have the article permanently removed or “unpublished.” To accomplish this, you must reach out to the publisher directly and convince them to remove it. Once they delete the article, Google will automatically stop showing it in search results.

In an effort to sell you their article suppression services, some reputation management services will tell you that it is impossible to completely remove these articles. It is, however, possible to completely remove these articles from the internet. That being said, it’s not an easy feat to accomplish, and any attempts to do so must be carefully planned out and strategic. 

At Katherine O’Brien Law, we understand that news agencies are under no legal obligation to remove your article. Therefore, we refrain from threatening to sue or sending other hostile demands or other correspondence and, instead, take a diplomatic approach to the situation. Moreover, when approaching a news organization regarding removal, the news article removal lawyers at Katherine O’Brien Law understand that it is important to understand how newspaper publishers and editors view unpublishing requests and tailor our communications accordingly. 

Specifically, we know that editors are more likely to unpublish an article that is viewed as inaccurate or unfair or one that is misleading or contains inflammatory or defamatory language or comments. Thus, it is important that a trained attorney review the underlying court records and the article in question to point out anything that can be seen as misleading, inaccurate, or defamatory. We also understand that editors are not likely to respond well to certain arguments, such as those regarding the need for privacy of your information. These insights drastically increase our chances of article removal. 

Newspapers are an important historical resource; they’re proud of this fact. As such, they can be quite hostile to the idea of deleting or removing published articles. Sometimes, news agencies will refuse to completely remove the article. For example, the details of your offense might be listed in a police blotter type of “news” article, along with other defendants with unrelated cases.  The news agency might not want to delete the article in its entirety due to the fact that it would delete information unrelated to your case. Other times, the news agency might just flat-out refuse to permanently remove the article.

This is where a lawyer is vital as a trained negotiator. The skilled lawyers at Katherine O’Brien Law don’t give up. Even after being told “no,” we will continue to negotiate persuasively and creatively with the publisher to reach other beneficial outcomes. This could include redacting your name completely from the article or making other edits or corrections to the article that will make your identity anonymous.  

Sometimes, despite even a skilled attorney’s best efforts, the news agency refuses to remove or redact the article. Fortunately, there are a couple of other options for mitigating the reputation damage an online article can cause.

2. Deindexing the Article

Deindexing means removing a link from Google so that the content is no longer visible in search results when someone Googles your name. Although the article still exists, it can only be accessed if someone has a direct link to the URL (in which case they already knew about the article) or if someone goes to the website where the article is posted and finds it there.

There are two primary ways to achieve deindexing:

1. Through Google: This method involves requesting Google to remove the link from its search results. However, Google will only agree to deindex content if it violates their specific policies, such as in cases of non-consensual explicit images, personal information published without consent (doxxing), content that violates laws, or other sensitive information that poses a risk to the individual’s safety. Google’s policies on content removal are stringent, making this a challenging route. More information on Google’s content removal policies can be found here.
2. Through the Platform or News Agency: This method involves convincing the website or news agency that published the content to add a “noindex” tag to the page’s source code. A “noindex” tag instructs search engines not to index the page, effectively removing it from search results. This approach is often more feasible than directly through Google, as it doesn’t require a violation of Google’s policies. However, it requires a strategic and diplomatic approach to persuade the publisher to implement this change, as they are under no obligation to comply.

At Katherine O’Brien Law, if we are not successful in completely removing the article, we pursue both deindexing options to mitigate the damage. Our experienced attorneys will either reach out to Google to argue for deindexing based on policy violations or negotiate directly with the website or news agency to add a “noindex” tag, ensuring the content no longer appears in search results.

3. Search Engine Suppression 

If complete removal or deindexing is not possible, the next-best solution for most clients is search engine suppression. This process involves creating and posting positive internet content (such as blog posts, social media profiles, etc.) regarding you in an effort to push down—or suppress—the negative content in search results where it is less likely to be seen.

Thus, if when you Google your name, the news article or articles regarding your arrest appear on the first page of Google, content suppression services will push them down so that they are harder to see. Of course, with content suppression, the negative articles still exist online and might, in fact, still be found. However, when complete removal and deindexing have failed, this solution is better than nothing, as it at least makes the article(s) harder to find. 

For some clients, we might recommend search engine suppression as the best course of action for their particular situation.  Although content removal is the best possible solution to negative online content, it is not always possible to accomplish this, particularly when the content in question is newsworthy or has not been dismissed or expunged. Fortunately, content removal is not your only option for dealing with negative news articles. 

For More In-Depth Information Regarding Our Content Removal Services, read our blog post on How to Remove a News Article, Arrest Record, Police Blotter, and/or Mugshot from Google Search or the Internet.

How Long Does the Process Take?

The time frame for article removal varies widely from case to case. While some cases take only a couple of weeks to complete, others might take several months. This can add to the overall processing time when we need to request and obtain further information or documentation (such as underlying court records). 

If you have questions regarding news article removal, call today to speak with one of our content removal lawyers for a free consultation. You can reach us at (856) 832-2482 or by filling out our Contact Form.