If someone has said something about you that is untrue, and damaging to your reputation, it can feel like you have no recourse for making things right. If you try and petition site owners that allow this kind of content, they may not respond to you. Here are some options for online reputation management if you’re ever in this situation.
Social Media
Practicing good SEO and social media allows you to push unfavorable results out of the top search pages. This helps improve your reputation when someone searches for content about you.
Request Removal
This strategy doesn’t always work because of US laws protecting site owners, but it’s always a good idea to try.
DMCA
If you own any of the text, or the images or video, that have been posted then a DMCA is a solid strategy. You simply claim ownership over the copyrighted material, and the site owner typically has little recourse to fight you.
Find Out Removal Guidelines
Yelp allows original posters to remove their reviews. Find out if you can talk with those users, and what you can offer them to try and get them to remove the negative review.
Court Ordered Removals
If the poster is anonymous, you can sue John Doe to get a default judgment. If this works, you have a court order you can present to the website in order to try and get removal from hosting companies and search engines.
Consult a Reputation Management Firm
Reputation management is a good last resort if you can’t solve the problem on your own. A variety of fixes are available, so you should definitely try and see what you can do before you consult a professional. However, understand that consulting a professional may come with guarantees of removal that can be valuable too.
