Read the URL and name the office that published it
Copy the release URL out of your search results exactly as it appears, because the slug tells you where the request goes. Anything beginning /usao- belongs to a district office: /usao-ct is the District of Connecticut, /usao-edny is the Eastern District of New York. Anything beginning /opa/pr belongs to main Justice in Washington and never goes to a district. Match your code against the U.S. Attorneys listing.
While the page is open, put four things in a note: the full URL, the headline exactly as printed, the publication date, and your name as it appears in the text. Every message you send from here quotes all four, and an office that has to go looking for the page is an office that does nothing.
Search your name in quotes first. If the result on your first page is a news pickup or an aggregator rather than justice.gov, that is a different request to a different company and this guide is not the one you need today.
Skip the two forms every other guide sends you to
Do not file an Information Quality Act Request for Correction. DOJ runs one at PRA.inbox@usdoj.gov, and its own Information Quality Guidelines exempt your document by name under Additional Exemptions for Categories of Information: "Press releases fact sheets, press conferences or similar communications (in any medium) that announce, support or give public notice of information in DOJ." Two more lines on the same list cover subpoenas and adjudicative processes, and criminal proceeding information. The same page commits DOJ to respond to those requests within 120 calendar days, so that is the wait for a refusal on category alone.
Do not file a Privacy Act amendment request either. 28 CFR 16.81 exempts the U.S. Attorneys' Criminal Case Files and Civil Case Files from the Privacy Act subsection that carries your access and amendment rights. The right you would be exercising has been switched off for those systems, and what comes back is a citation, not a decision about your case.
Do not email press@usdoj.gov. DOJ's Information for Journalists page sets that inbox up as the Office of Public Affairs contact with the news media. You are not its audience, and a removal request sent there gets bounced to a component or ignored.
Write the district office, and put the order in that email
Open justice.gov/usao-[your code]/contact-us and take whatever address it publishes. What is on that page changes district to district. The Southern District of New York publishes a webmaster mailbox under the line "For technical issues with our site, contact the Webmaster here" and a Press Inquiries number, on its contact page. The Eastern District of Pennsylvania publishes a public affairs address under "CONTACT THE PUBLIC AFFAIRS OFFICE." The Eastern District of New York publishes no email at all, just an address and a main phone line. Some districts have no contact page to open.
Never build the address from a pattern. Three districts, three formats: SDNY is USANYS.SDNYWebmaster@usdoj.gov, Northern Illinois is USAILN.InternetWebmaster@usdoj.gov, Southern Florida is usafls-webmaster@usdoj.gov. A guessed address bounces and you never find out. Where the page lists a public affairs or press address, use that one first, because that is the office that wrote the release.
The certified order goes on this email as an attachment. Lead with the URL, the headline, the date, your name as printed and the case number, then one line stating the disposition, then one sentence naming the change you want. Keep it to a page. The stamped order is the whole argument, and telling them a case was dismissed without attaching it gets you nothing. If the district publishes no email address, mail the certified copy to the postal address on its contact page and file the webmaster form in the next section, which is then your only written route.
If your URL starts /opa/pr you have no district to write to. That page belongs to the Office of Public Affairs, so go straight to the forms in the next section and pick the OPA topic there.
Ask for the smallest change that fixes it
Ask for one specific thing, and make it the smallest one that solves your problem. In order of what somebody can actually do at their desk: a correction or update note appended to the existing page, your name redacted where the release names several defendants and only your case changed, or the release unpublished. Editing a live page is ordinary work. Unpublishing one is not a change a webmaster makes on their own, so opening with it hands them the easy refusal.
A sentence that does the job: "The attached certified order, entered on [date] in [case number], vacated the conviction described in this release. I am asking that a correction note reflecting that order be added to the page." Do not argue that the release is unfair or that it is costing you work. The thing an office can act on is that the live page no longer states the outcome accurately, and that is something they can check in a minute.
File the webmaster form the same day
Open Your Message to the Department of Justice Webmaster. Under "Please choose the general topic of your message:" pick Send corrected or updated information for the site. The option above it, "Report a broken link or typographical error," looks close and is not yours.
Name and Email Address are optional. The topic and the message are required. Fill in the email anyway or there is no reply path. The message box stops at 2,000 characters, and the page tells you to include the site name and page title or URL in your message, so open with the URL. The button reads Preview, and you confirm on the screen after it.
There is no attachment field here, and the page says the form should not be used for service of official, case-related or legal documents, so this is a pointer to your email and not a substitute for it. It is worth the four minutes because DOJ states the message is reviewed by the webmaster and forwarded to the responsible component. For an /opa/pr release, use the main contact form and select Media Inquiries (OPA); on that same form a district release goes under U.S. Attorneys.
Nothing acknowledges it, so set your own dates
You get no receipt, no ticket number and no status page. DOJ publishes no window for this because there is no process to publish one for, so do not sit waiting on a date nobody promised you. Put 30 days and 60 days in your calendar the day you send, and go do something else with the wait.
At 30 days, call the district once and ask whether the request reached whoever handles the website. SDNY lists Press Inquiries at (212) 637-2600 on its contact page. Many districts publish no press line at all; where there is none, use the main office number on the contact page. Note the date and who you spoke to, then leave it alone.
At 60 days with no answer, treat it as declined. There is no appeal, nothing above the component to escalate to, and no published criteria to argue against, so sending the same request again buys you nothing. That is the day you stop working the source and start working the copies.
Clean Google last, and what none of this reaches
Google's Refresh Outdated Content tool only works after the page has actually changed or gone. Google's own wording is that it covers content deleted from a site that still comes up in results, and that if you have already updated a live page you do not have to fill out the form. Run against a live justice.gov page it does nothing. You need a Google account, and the controls read Request refresh, then the Page tab, then Submit.
The private information form will not take a criminal charge. Google's policy covers your address, phone number or email, confidential government IDs, bank and card numbers, pictures of your signature or ID, private records such as medical records, and confidential logins. A charge is on none of those lists, and Google adds that content about something newsworthy might not come down.
A pardon makes this worse, not better. DOJ's Pardon Attorney FAQ says expungement is a judicial remedy that cannot be granted within the Department of Justice or by the President, that the pardoned offense would not be removed from your criminal record, and that every grant is publicly listed on the Pardon Attorney's website. That is a second government page carrying your name and your offense.
The release was copied the day it went out. Wire services, aggregators and web archives all took it, and a change at justice.gov reaches none of them. Every copy is its own request to its own company, and the government page is where this starts, not where it ends.