Erase Yourself from the Web: 3 Methods and What to Do If They Fail

Checking your potential clients, partners, and other counterparties on the Internet is a mandatory stage of compliance procedures in banks, migration providers, and government agencies.

Therefore, negative information found on Yandex and Google can lead to refusals to open accounts, difficulties in obtaining a residence permit, visas, and citizenship, blocking of foreign assets, and even placement on sanctions lists, PEP lists, and other "blacklists."

Moreover, numerous studies have proven that negativity about a company or its owners/managers leads to a drop in sales, disruption of business deals, and difficulties with hiring employees.

However, before you understand how to remove information about yourself from the Internet, you first need to decide what to delete.

Analysts at Backlinko and ClickFlow analyzed over 5 million search results and found that ~99.9% of all users only study the first page of search results.

As for banking compliance, our experience shows that compliance officers also base decisions on opening accounts on the first page of search results for the company and its owners, and sometimes consult the second page. Employees are busy and simply do not have time to thoroughly study the entire Internet.

Thus, when it comes to deleting your data from the Internet, you need to focus on the first two pages of search results in Yandex and Google for queries containing the first and last name of a person or the name of a company. These first two pages are sometimes called the "Top 20" because they contain 20 links.

In order to remove data from websites, you need to establish contact with someone regarding this topic. All media outlets must indicate editorial contacts, but it is more difficult with websites that do not fall into this category or Telegram channels. Most often, they do not indicate contact information; you can try to find it through special services, for example, Who.is.

Removing information about yourself through dialogue with the site administration is usually ineffective due to a number of factors.

Firstly, if unwanted information is published on one of the websites specializing in publishing compromising information, then it is highly likely that no appeals or even the threat of a court will affect the outcome. Most likely, such a resource will demand money for removing the information, and then a similar publication will appear on another resource, most likely owned by the same people. In this way, unscrupulous resources earn money through "black" PR.

Secondly, it is important to understand that for information sites and media, any news, especially negative news, is a source of traffic on which such sites earn money. Loud and scandalous headlines attract users, so the media are very reluctant to cooperate on issues of removing information.

Cons:

• Low percentage of successful cases
• Risks of publicity and worsening of the situation due to the publication of new negative information (in the case of compromising sites)

Pros:

• High probability of a successful outcome in the case of personal contacts with a specific site

Deindexing is an effective tool for removing negativity online if you need to remove a small number of publications and have budget restrictions.

The essence of the method is to remove links from the search results of Yandex and Google. That is, by entering the corresponding query with the name of the company or person, the user will not see links with negativity in the search results. At the same time, the compromising material itself will remain on the site, accessible via a direct link. This effectively neutralizes the damage from a negative publication, since it cannot be found on the Internet and seen in the search results that everyone uses.

However, deindexing has a number of limitations and risks. Firstly, you can remove only specific information from search engines that falls under the definition of the right to be forgotten. This information must be either knowingly false ("black" PR, compromising evidence, etc.), outdated (for example, information about former government positions, financial or legal problems), or obtained illegally (for example, if a judicial or medical secret was disclosed or confidential information or state secrets were leaked). In this case, the applicant must have irrefutable evidence of the illegality of this information.

Secondly, following the standard deindex algorithm, the probability of a successful outcome is not high. According to official statistics, search engines satisfy less than 30% of user applications for the right to be forgotten.

Thirdly, when filing an application to remove information from search engines, there are risks of publicity, since applications sometimes end up in online databases and can surface on the Internet. Instead of removing information from the Internet without a trace, you can attract increased attention to it. This happened when Sergey Mikhailov, a former member of a criminal group, wanted to remove publications that talked about his past. Many media outlets found out about this, and the biographical facts that Mikhailov wanted to hide began to be actively discussed on the Internet again.

However, thanks to the methodology developed by Avagard Global specialists at the intersection of marketing and law, the company has many more successful de-indexing cases—almost 90%—with minimal risks of publicity. Moreover, we have managed to remove information from top media outlets such as Kommersant and Forbes from the search engine, as well as de-index information worldwide.

Cons:

• Low percentage of successful cases if the user tries to remove information themselves from the search or through other contractors
• Risks of publicity
• Low efficiency with a large number of unwanted publications

Pros:

• With the Avagard Global team, the probability of success reaches 90% with minimal risks of publicity
• Relatively inexpensive way to remove information from search engines

The least popular way to remove information from the Internet is to go to court to protect business reputation. Due to legal difficulties in proving the defamatory nature of information, according to the Supreme Court, only about 30% of appeals to the court to protect business reputation and remove information from the Internet end in favor of the plaintiff.

Companies and individuals rarely go to court to remove information from the Internet due to the risk of publicity. Court cases, especially those to protect the business reputation of large brands and entrepreneurs, are widely covered in the media, drawing even more attention to the "tarnished" reputation.

This was the case, for example, when the owner of Rusal, Oleg Deripaska, sued the head of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, Gennady Zyuganov, for saying that his business was a "scam and a crime." Despite the fact that the parties entered into a settlement agreement, the media continued to harp on this conflict for a long time, which certainly did not have a positive effect on the businessman's reputation.

Cons:

• Low probability of a positive outcome
• Risk of publicity
• Unpredictable implementation timeframes, since the trial may drag on for a year or more
• Presence of legal proceedings as such in the company's and the person's history (which is already a "red flag" when assessing risks)

Pros:

• In case of success, a decision will be received that is backed by law

None of the tools for removing information from the Internet give predictable results, and each carries the risk of publicity. Moreover, none of them will protect against the emergence of new negativity in the future. This is especially true for top officials and businessmen in highly competitive markets, where custom-made “black” PR and information attacks from competitors and the media are common practice. Scandalous headlines attract the attention of users and are promoted by search engines to the top of the search results, damaging one's reputation. Thus, the information vacuum is usually filled with negative information.

As a result, even if successful, the tools for removing information about yourself from the Internet give a short-term effect, and after some time the removal process will need to be started over again.

What to do if the tools for removing information from the Internet are often ineffective?

We mentioned above that ~100% of users stop searching after the first two pages of Yandex and Google. Accordingly, by ensuring that only relevant and up-to-date information is found on the first pages of search engines, you have complete control over your reputation and manage what your partners, clients, bank compliance officers, other contractors, and the general user think of you. In other words, you manage public opinion. Therefore, it makes no sense to delete all unwanted information from the Internet, but it is worth focusing on cleaning up only the first pages of search results.

Creating a digital profile consists of three key stages:

• Stage 1: Defining target positioning
• Stage 2: Writing articles in accordance with target positioning and publishing them on authoritative platforms (usually these are authoritative first- and second-tier media)
• Stage 3: Promoting new publications to the top of search results, so that they occupy every position on the first pages of search results

As a result, unwanted information is removed from the first pages of search results without a lawsuit or communication with search engines and sites, therefore minimizing the risks of publicity. At the same time, only relevant articles are at the top of search engine results, forming the desired image of a person or brand.

Thanks to technical solutions, published articles are fixed at the top of search engines, ensuring long-term protection of business reputation. Moreover, in the event of the publication of new defamatory information, the risks of it reaching the first pages of search results will be minimal.

Forming a digital profile allows you not only to protect your business reputation but also to successfully pass banking and migration compliance procedures, remove your PEP status, and significantly increase your chances of success in adjusting international compliance databases such as World-Check, Dow Jones, and LexisNexis.

These databases, used by foreign banks, government agencies, migration services, and commercial companies, collect information about a person and a company from the Internet. Therefore, without a comprehensive adjustment of the digital profile, attempts to adjust a person's profile in World-Check and other databases will most likely be ineffective.

The Avagard Global team has developed its own methodology for creating a digital profile, combining IT, PR, and marketing tools, which allows you to get results in a predictable timeframe. Our methodology is especially effective in complex cases—with a large number of unwanted publications or if they are posted on strong sites (for example, on federal media and compromising aggregators).

We work with digital profiles in Yandex and Google all over the world. In addition to the Russian Federation, we have successfully implemented projects to remove information from the Internet and create digital profiles in Kazakhstan, the USA, Great Britain, Switzerland, the UAE, Italy, Luxembourg, Cyprus, and Serbia. We cooperate not only with Russian media but also with local media around the world and in local languages.

Pros:

• Work with any information without restrictions
• High probability of success (> 95%)
• Minimal risks of publicity
• Long-term results
• Protection from future negativity
• Predictable timeframes

Cons:

• May require a large budget if a significant volume of unwanted publications is detected

Our team has all the currently available tools for removing and neutralizing unwanted information on the Internet, both technical and legal. This makes it possible to use and combine them depending on the specific case.

The efficiency of using tools by the Avagard Global team is higher than market indicators, primarily due to our own technical solutions and methodological know-how.

A multidisciplinary team of experts (developers, SEO specialists, lawyers, and PR experts) allows us to remove information from the Internet in the most difficult cases and all over the world.

Our clients include large entrepreneurs, including those on the Forbes list, top managers, and companies that are leaders in their markets.

Leave a request, and we will consult with you and select the most effective tool for removing information from the Internet in your situation.