Write down every URL, and check what kind of site this is
Search the headline in quotation marks, then search your own name in quotation marks, and list every URL carrying the story. Wire copy gets republished under other mastheads, and each copy is a separate address with a separate desk behind it. That list is your work order, and a result at one outlet binds nobody at the next.
Before you write to anyone, check one thing: does the site charge a fee to take the page down? If it does, this isn't a corrections problem, it's an arrest-record or mugshot site wearing a masthead, and Google has a path built for exactly that. It needs three things to be true: you're a subject of the content, the site is not a business review site, and the site requires payment to have the content removed. Never pay them.
Classify it in one word before you write to anyone
False, superseded, or private. False means the story contains a factual error. Superseded means it was accurate when it ran and something has happened since: charges dropped, a conviction vacated, a case sealed or expunged, a suit dismissed. Private means the page is showing your home address, phone number, a government ID number, a bank or card number, a medical record, or login credentials. The desk routes your email on which word you use, so pick before you write.
If it's none of the three, there is no procedure, and that's the honest answer. An old arrest that ended in a conviction, a suit you lost, a bad quarter, a piece that's simply unflattering: no outlet has a form for it, and unless European or UK data protection law covers you, no search engine has a category for it either. If it does cover you, the delisting path below is the exception: Google weighs how old the content is and whether a conviction is spent or expunged. Anybody selling you a takedown for that is selling you nothing. The last section on this page is what actually moves that situation.
Send the corrections desk the URL, the sentence, and the document
Find the outlet's own Ethics, Standards or Corrections page and take the address off it. The pattern is corrections@ the outlet's domain, and the Texas Tribune's ethics page is a live example of what you're hunting for: a written policy, with corrections@texastribune.org printed on it. Don't send this to a tips line, a general contact form, or the reporter's DMs.
Put six things in the email and nothing else: the exact URL, the headline, the publication date, the sentence you're disputing quoted word for word, what's wrong with it, and the document that proves it. A summary of how the piece reads is not a request. An assertion with no document attached gets a form reply, so attach the docket entry, the dismissal order, the expungement order or the agency record before you hit send.
Then expect a correction rather than a deletion. The Texas Tribune states it will work quickly to fully address the error, correcting it within the story, detailing the error on the story page and adding it to a running list of Tribune corrections. ProPublica runs the same thing in public, a dated line for each story naming what it got wrong. That is the win condition here, and it comes as a note appended to the piece plus a public page of its own.
If the facts changed, ask for the narrower change by name
Name the remedy you want. An editor's note or update at the top of the story, a follow-up piece on the outcome, your name taken off a routine crime or arrest item if you're a private individual, or, last, that they noindex the page. Attach the disposition document to whichever one you're asking for, and ask for the smallest change that fixes the search result. The small ask is the one an editor can say yes to today.
If an editor agrees to suppress the page instead of editing it, hand them the mechanic, because you can't run it yourself. It's their Search Console Removals tool, which only works on a site they've verified they own: the Temporary Removals tab, New Request, then Temporarily remove URL. Pass along Google's own warning with it. A successful request lasts only about six months, and blocking a URL does not stop Google crawling the page.
So the block only buys time. For it to hold, the publisher also has to return a 404 or 410, password-protect the page, or add a noindex meta tag, and Google says exactly that on the same help page. With nothing behind it, the article comes back into search on its own, months later, when everyone has stopped watching.
Once the page has actually changed or gone, clean up the search result yourself with Refresh Outdated Content. In the tool, select Request refresh, enter the URL on the Page tab, and select Submit. It refreshes a stale snippet for a page that already moved, and it removes nothing that's still live. Google's own first line on it: if you've already updated a live page, you don't have to fill out the form.
Google's four paths, and which one is yours
Open Google's personal content removal request and read the four options it starts with: Content contains nudity or sexual material, Content contains your personal information, Content is on a site with exploitative removal practices, and Content shows a person under 18. An old news story about you is not on that list, and that isn't an oversight. If the page is exposing private information, the second option is a real path, and the button on Google's private info page reads Start removal request.
Two limits on that path, both in Google's own words. On newsworthiness: if the content is about something important or newsworthy, like the news, Google might not take it down. And the Results about you tool will not touch this at all, because Google counts some results as valuable to the public, including government or educational websites, online newspapers, or business websites, and on a result like that you won't even see a Remove result option.
A court order is the only lever that reliably moves a news URL out of search. It goes through Google's legal reporting flow, where the two reasons that matter here read Court order: Report content that a court decision has determined is unlawful and Defamation: Report content that defames you or your business/organization. The order has to name the specific URLs, and you get one by winning or settling a defamation case first. Without an order, the defamation option is a request, not a mechanism.
If European or UK data protection law covers you, there's a fourth path: Google's right to be forgotten process, filed on its delisting webform. It wants the specific URLs, the search query you want them delisted for, which is normally your full name, a description of how the content relates to you and why, and an email address. What you get is a partial mute, not a removal: Google delists only for queries related to your name, and only on versions of Google's results for countries applying European data protection law. It also states that journalists have decided that the content is in the public's interest and that it weighs their judgment, especially on recent stories. Corporations generally can't file at all.
If the article is false, check your state's clock today
A written correction demand is often the price of admission for real damages, and the clock is short. California Civil Code 48a is the loaded example, and it reaches a libel in a daily or weekly news publication, meaning one that publishes at least once a week in print or electronic form: the plaintiff must serve on the publisher, at the place of publication, a written notice specifying the statements claimed to be libelous and demanding that those statements be corrected, and that notice must be served within 20 days after knowledge of the publication.
Miss that window in California, when the outlet publishes at least once a week, and you recover special damages only, which is provable out-of-pocket loss and nothing else. Serve it, prove notice, demand and failure to correct, and the statute opens up general, special, and exemplary damages. The publisher then has three weeks after service to run the correction. Look up your own state's retraction statute today, because if it works like California's, the clock started when you learned about the story, not when you called a lawyer.
None of this applies to a true story. Truth is a defense, so suing over an accurate article is a way to spend money and republish the piece at the same time. If the article is accurate, skip this entirely and go to the last section.
When the answer is no
Assume it fails. An accurate story from a legitimate outlet stays up and stays indexed, and asking harder changes nothing. What does change it is changing the record underneath it: sealing, expungement, vacatur, dismissal. A document is the only thing that reliably reopens an editor's door, because it turns your request from an argument into a fact, and it's also the thing every search path above asks you for.
Then work the four moves that are left. Ask for the addition instead of the subtraction, meaning an editor's note or a follow-up on the outcome, so your own search result carries the resolution. Ask specifically for de-naming if it's a routine crime brief about a private individual, because some newsrooms will do that when they won't delete. Outrank it with owned properties, profiles and newer coverage, which is months of work rather than days. And monitor rather than re-ask: a second and third removal request to the same desk hardens the refusal, and it can become a story of its own.
Be clear about what none of this does. Taking the page out of Google takes it out of Google, and Google says so plainly: even after a removal, content might still be on the internet and people might still find it through links, social media, or other search engines. A correction doesn't unpublish a story, a delisting doesn't edit one, and nothing here seals a court record. That last one is a motion in the court that heard the case, and it's separate work.