How to Remove Online Defamation

Google is a United States based search engine that operates according to U.S. law. While Google Search provides access to publicly available web pages, it does not control the content of the web pages currently in its index. Given this fact, and pursuant to Section 230(c) of the Communications Decency Act, Google does not remove allegedly defamatory material from its search results.

Contact the Defaming Website's Webmaster

If you are the victim of online defamation that shows up on Google Search you will need to reach out to the webmaster of the website on which the defamatory content has been posted in order to have the information removed or changed. If you haven’t yet worked with the webmaster of the site that published the defamatory content about you, please you can learn more about contacting a site's webmaster to have content removed here. Once the defamatory material has been modified on the site in question, Google's search results will reflect this change when they next crawl the site.

Use a Court Order to Remove Unlawful Content

If you have obtained a court order which declares that the content of a web page appearing in Google search results is unlawful, follow the instructions on the form here.