how do I remove my name from Google's index

Most of us use the world wide webb quite frequently. We check our email and surf the internet on a regular basis. Most people probably spend atleast a few minutes every day on line, either communicating with someone or looking for some sort of information. Many of us write on blogs or participate in sites like facebook. We use these sites like people used to use village squares to communicate. This means that we share information about ourselves on the internet. Sometimes people also share information about other people and publish it online. As all of us know, sometimes the things people write online are inappropriate. There are also times when we might write things online that we would like to have taken off. You never know when your situation might change, thus necissitating certain information to be taken off of the internet. But with these huge internet search engines, almost anyone can easily find the information you do not want online. How will you possibly remove this information from a search, and especially from Google's enormous index?

First of all, there are some problems with this situation. There is technically no way to get your name off of the Google index. The reason is that the internet is technically public information. Sites are not owned by Google. The company simply provides a search engine and list of sites that are the most popular (that receive the most hits). Those who own the sites are probably the authors or the ones who post information on them. They have complete control over the sites and the information that goes onto them. This means that the only way to remove your name from the google index is to take the name off of the sites. Probably the best way to do this is to email the people who maintain those sites and ask them to remove the offending comment. However, this might only work with certain sites because it is entirely up to the discretion of those who maintain them.

Another way to try to remove your name from Google's index is, paradoxically, to put it on the index in an even more conspicious manner. Google simply pulls up the sites that hit your name the most on a search. If you can put your name on a site that casts it in a way you like, then people might be much more likely to look at those sites than the ones you don't like. This depends on if the new sites will actually be more popular than the previous ones. If not, then you won't be any better off. However, if you can attach your name to a popular site in some way, this means that it will probably appear much more frequently than on other sites.

Besides these two methods there is basically no way to get your name off an internet site. This is unfortunate but simply the way the internet is designed. In much the same way you cannot control what a newspaper prints, you cannot control what someone on an internet site writes. Of course, if the information is truly defamatory, you could sue the person who wrote it, but this is a very drastic and expensive alternative. Try writing to them first and see if you can appeal to their sense of decency.

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