Case studies / Putting a bankruptcy behind you
Putting a bankruptcy behind you.
A bankruptcy ages off a credit report in as little as seven years. Google keeps it on page one until someone makes it move. A technology founder came to us with six results doing exactly that. Some of them we removed. The rest we buried under the truth.
The short version
We don't name clients. Here's exactly what happened anyway. The credit bureaus are required to forget a bankruptcy, seven years for some chapters, ten for others. Google is under no such obligation. A technology founder's discharged bankruptcy still owned six of the ten results on page one of his name search. Three months later it owned zero, and it has stayed that way.
Research: what we found
A founder and CEO with a long track record in B2B technology came to us with a problem that was quietly costing him business. A personal bankruptcy, and a related civil case with a fraud allegation in the complaint, had been picked up and republished by legal-aggregator sites. Six of them owned page one. When prospects, partners, and investors searched his name, that was the first thing they saw.
The system that was built to let people recover had already done its part. The bankruptcy was discharged. No creditor was weighing it anymore, and if a lender pulled his credit, the law dictates exactly how long it may count against him. The aggregators were under no such rule. They kept airing his dirty laundry years after the matter closed, for an audience the court never intended: anyone who typed his name. Nobody searches a credit report before a first meeting. They search Google, and Google was serving his worst year as the answer to who he is.
- Risk courtlistener.com Bankruptcy filing, republished in full The petition, the schedules, the related civil complaint with the fraud allegation. Position 1. First thing every prospect saw
- Risk justia.com The same filing, second copy Aggregators copy each other. One filing becomes six results.
- Risk unicourt.com The civil complaint, third copy The same documents again, on a third database, ranking on its own.
- Neutral the founder's company site His actual work, on page two A decade of building companies, outranked by his worst year. The truth was there. It was just losing
Plan: what we told them
We mapped every result and split the problem in two, in writing, on day one.
Every one of the six was a legal aggregator: a third-party database republishing court filings, not a news outlet reporting a story. That mattered, because databases have takedown and de-indexing paths that work when you use them correctly. We told him before he signed which ones we expected to clear outright and which ones historically drag, and that the ones that would not come down had to be outranked instead, which takes longer and shows up gradually.
We also told him the honest part: a discharge closes the case for creditors, not for search. So the plan he approved had two tracks and two timelines: removals measured in weeks, suppression measured in months, with page one checked on a schedule either way.
Execute: what we did
Takedown and de-indexing requests with the court-listing and legal-aggregator sites carrying the filings. Four cleared outright, one was de-indexed from search, and every copy removed was one less way for the story to surface.
Authoritative, accurate content about his companies, his results, and his expertise, structured and interlinked so search engines had something better to serve for his name than a court docket.
The copies that would not come down were outranked, not faked and not hidden. They still exist. They are simply no longer the first thing a prospect decides about him.
- Justia Removed
- CourtListener Removed
- UniCourt Removed
- Trellis Removed
- PacerMonitor De-indexed
- DocketBird Suppressed
All six were legal aggregators: third-party databases republishing the filings, which is why most of them respond to direct takedown and de-indexing requests. The ones that would not come down were outranked. Each result was sorted into the right bucket on day one.
Monitor: what we watch now
Six bankruptcy results on page one at intake. Zero at the three-month mark. The removals are permanent by nature; the suppression is not, which is why his name search is re-checked on a recurring schedule, so a resurfaced docket copy gets caught and handled before a prospect ever sees it.
Page one held at every recheck.
Key takeaway
A bankruptcy does not have to be a life sentence on Google. The aggregators that pile on can often be removed outright, and the ones that will not budge can be outranked. The goal was never to hide what happened. It was to make sure the first page tells the whole story, so that a discharge finally means something in search too.
Is a bankruptcy or an old case costing you business?
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