# The Discoverability Company: full text

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## We build digital visibility infrastructure for the internet of yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
URL: https://discoverability.co/

We build digital visibility infrastructure for the internet of yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Search We build the websites, content, and search results that put you in front of people on Google, Bing, Brave, and everywhere else they look. We build the authoritative sources, promote them, and suppress or remove the negative. AI visibility We give the large language models behind ChatGPT, Gemini, and the rest clear, accurate sources about you. We also know where that information has to sit for the models to pick it up. Agentic Internet AI agents already research, compare, and buy on people’s behalf. We prepare your online footprint so they understand your work and put you on the shortlist. And we (probably) have a solution for your specific needs. Three kinds of client, and every situation we work on . If you would rather start from the work itself, here is everything we do and what it costs , or why we built the company . People → Your online footprint should reflect who you are today. We help founders, executives, and individuals address old coverage, exposed personal information, and what’s missing from their story, so people find a fuller, more accurate picture. Businesses → Your online presence should reflect the business you’ve built. We help small businesses and startups fix outdated websites, weak search results, and inaccurate information, so customers find you, understand what you offer, and choose you. Podcasts → Put your catalog to work beyond listening apps. We turn episodes into searchable pages, transcripts, and useful content, so people find your show through the guests, topics, and conversations they’re already looking for in search and AI. © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## We built the company we needed.
URL: https://discoverability.co/about-the-discoverability-company/

Why We built the company we needed. We are The Discoverability Company, and we exist because this industry desperately needed an honest broker . We believe: You get a say Most people and businesses assume the internet will say whatever it says and there is nothing to be done about it. We fundamentally disagree. You should have a direct say in your own online narrative, and in most cases you can. Almost nobody knows that, and almost nobody tells them. Discretion There is nothing more personal than your own name or the business you built. We treat both the way we would want ours treated: with total discretion. We do not share who we work with, we anonymize every case study, and we would never name you without your permission. Not in a pitch, not on this site. We do what we say We tell you what is feasible, what is going to be difficult, and what is not worth your money at all. Then we stay with you and do it. We are here to shoot you straight and be your partner , not to upsell you on something you do not need. It is the same reason we share what we know for free . It started as one person's problem Drew Chapin co-founded an advertising technology company that failed publicly. The bankruptcy and the legal fallout that followed became the first thing anyone found under his name , and it stayed there. So he went looking for help, and what he found was worse than the problem. Low-effort work, offshored to people who had never read a word about him, sold at prices that made no sense. One firm quoted more than $100,000 for a plan he could tell, from fifteen years in online marketing, he was capable of executing himself. Nobody would explain what they were actually going to do. Several would not say what was realistic and what was not. So he did it himself: removal requests, new pages, sources rebuilt one at a time, over months. Then he started doing it for other people in the same situation, mostly as a favor. That became this company. What we do now On the back of that experience and more than fifteen years in digital marketing for startups and small businesses , we work on what the internet finds and understands about people, businesses, and podcasts. A website worth ranking, stronger sources, content that answers what people actually ask, removals where a real route exists, and the ongoing work to keep it that way. The number of places you have to maintain is now absurd. Google, Bing, Brave, review sites, social platforms, Wikipedia, and whatever an AI assistant says when somebody asks about you . It grows every year and none of it maintains itself. Nobody has that kind of time. You are running a business or a career. That is the whole reason we are here. What we believe You get a say. The internet's version of you was written by algorithms, aggregators, and whoever published first. You were never asked. We think people should be participants in their own online narrative rather than subjects of it, and the moment that matters to us is when somebody searches their own name and recognizes the person they read about . Discretion. Your situation stays between us. Every case study we publish is anonymized, and we do not use client names to sell to the next person. We do what we say. Some results are accurate, fairly sourced, and staying exactly where they are. We tell you that before you pay us rather than after. An honest no costs us a sale and saves you a year of paying for something that was never going to work. We are not here to gatekeep We publish best practices and useful tips on this site, free and ungated, and none of it asks for your email. A lot of online reputation work can be done at low cost or no cost , and somebody who wants to handle it themselves should be able to find out how. So the guides say what a site actually asks you for, which form to use, and where the process tends to stall. Some people read one and handle it in an evening. Others read the same page, see eight separate forms and a year of follow-up, and decide they would rather hand it over. Both are fine outcomes. Have a look through them . If you get to the end of one and would rather we did it, that is what the services are for. Honest, clear, transparent pricing At our core, we know there is far less magic and secret sauce here than our competitors would like you to believe . A great deal of this work is commoditized, well understood, and repeatable. We price like it. Fair, transparent, and published , so you can see what you are paying for and know you are not getting a raw deal. Project work is flat-rate and scoped, and when it ends, it ends. The services that really are ongoing, like ad management and monitoring, are billed monthly and you can stop any month. A bigger or more complicated situation still gets a real number from us quickly, rather than a discovery call and a closed door . On this page It started as one person's problem What we do now What we believe We are not here to gatekeep Honest, clear, transparent pricing Meet Drew Chapin → Based in the United States, by people who have felt the pain We are a Philadelphia company with people across the country, and we were named Best SEO Agency in Philadelphia of 2026 by Best of Best Review. We are also a second-chance employer . We are proud to hire people who have made poor choices, learned from them, and want to move forward with dignity and respect. It is difficult to think of a company with better reason to believe in that. Between the work itself and the people doing it, this is a company built by people who have been on the other side of it . That is not a marketing line. It is most of the reason any of us are here. Our terms of service and privacy policy are published in plain language, including the guarantees we put in writing and exactly what we do with your information. A person, every time. No bots, no scripts, and no ticket queue. You talk to the people doing the work, and the person shaping your plan is the person answering your email. Tell us what you are dealing with and you get an honest read on it, free, whether or not you ever hire us. Let’s talk → © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## The work, with the numbers attached.
URL: https://discoverability.co/case-studies/

Case studies The work, with the numbers attached. Every engagement here is anonymized , and every figure came out of the client's own account or a dated live check. We do not publish a number we cannot show you the source of, and we do not name a client to sell to the next one. Same orders, half the ad spend. → E-commerce. An outside agency was running Google Ads for a Shopify cleaning brand and reporting on the wrong number. We rebuilt the account around orders instead of clicks, and the same revenue came back for roughly half the spend. From nearly-invisible to #1 in their market. → Small business. A Florida clinic with two busy locations was nearly invisible in the map pack its customers actually use. We fixed the listings, the pages behind them, and the reviews, and it moved to number one in its market. Reclaiming your life after a federal case. → Justice-impacted. A judge handed down 48 months. Google handed down a life sentence. We worked the record itself, the sites that had copied it, and the pages that should have ranked instead, until his name led with his own work again. Putting a bankruptcy behind you. → Founder. A bankruptcy ages off a credit report in about seven years. Google keeps it forever, and it was the first thing anyone found about a founder who was still very much working. We built the sources that outranked it, and then kept them there. The record was expunged. Google didn't care. → Expungement. The court expunged her case years ago and the internet never got the memo. Copies had spread to sites that never check back for updates. We chased down every one of them, with the order in hand, until her name came back clean. The name the AI assistants mention most. → B2B. When a buyer asks an AI assistant who solves their problem, only one company gets named. We gave the models something accurate to read, in the places they actually read it, and made this one the name that comes up. An imposter site, dead in days, not months. → Impersonation. A pixel-for-pixel clone of a pre-IPO mining company's website went up, aimed squarely at its investors. We had it down in days rather than months, and put the monitoring in place to catch the next one on the day it appears. A new business, discoverable from day one. → New business. Most companies wait for a problem before they think about search. This one started on day one, so the site, the listings, and the sources were all in place before the first customer ever went looking. Want to know what yours would look like? Show us what people find when they search you now. We will tell you what can move, what cannot, and what it would take. What we do → See pricing → Every engagement on this page started the same way. Somebody showed us what came up when they searched their own name or their own company, and we told them plainly what could move, what could not, and what it would take to get there. That read is free, there is no obligation after it, and if the honest answer is that your results are already fine, that is what you will hear. Yours would start the same way. Let’s talk → © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## The name the AI assistants mention most.
URL: https://discoverability.co/case-studies/ai-answer-visibility/

Case Study / B2B The name the AI assistants mention most. When a buyer asks an AI assistant who solves their problem, only one thing matters: whether the answer says your name . This client showed up in about one answer in five. Now it is the name that comes up most in its category. 20% to 42% AI-answer visibility, June to July Most mentioned Brand in its category, across four assistants 6 Tracked terms at #1 on Google Share of AI answers naming the client June June: 20% 20% July July: 42% 42% Scored against a fixed panel of 15 buyer questions across four major AI assistants, re-run on dated cycles. Latest read 2026-07-23, reviewed with the client 2026-07-27. How to read this Out of every ten buyers asking an assistant who solves this problem, two used to hear this client's name. Now four do. Same fifteen questions, same four assistants, one month apart. The problem Buyers in this category increasingly open with an assistant rather than a search box. The client was named in about one answer in five , which meant four out of five buyers never heard of them at the moment they were deciding. What we did We fixed a panel of fifteen real buyer questions and scored the answers across four assistants, so there was something to measure. Then we built the accurate, well-sourced material these models actually draw on , and made the company's own pages consistent with it. Where it landed 20% to 42% in a month , and the most-mentioned name in its category across all four assistants. Six tracked terms also hold number one on Google, because the same work moves both. We can score how often the assistants name you, then go move that number. How we measured it. Visibility scored against a fixed panel of 15 buyer questions across four major AI assistants, re-run on dated cycles; latest read 2026-07-23. Figures reviewed with the client 2026-07-27. Client specifics under NDA. Every case study we publish is anonymized, and every figure on this page came out of the client's own account or a dated live check. We do not publish a number we cannot show you the source of. SEO and AI Optimization This is the service behind the work on this page. It explains what we actually do, what you get, and what it costs. See the service → © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## Putting a bankruptcy behind you.
URL: https://discoverability.co/case-studies/bankruptcy-off-page-one/

Case Study / Founder 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 somebody 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. 6 to 0 Bankruptcy results on page one, three months 4 Aggregators removed outright Held Maintained across repeat checks Bankruptcy results on page one At intake At intake: 6 6 Three months Three months: 0 0 Count of bankruptcy-related results on the first page of Google for the client's name. All six were legal aggregators republishing the filings. Held across repeat checks after the engagement. How to read this All six were aggregators republishing the same filing , not six separate stories. Four came down outright. The other two were outranked, and the result has held on every check since. The problem Six results on page one, all of them the bankruptcy. A credit report forgets this faster than Google does , and a founder raising a next round meets it in every diligence search. What we did Every one of the six was a legal aggregator republishing the filing. We filed against the ones with a route and removed four outright . For the two that stayed, we built accurate current material about the work they are doing now. Where it landed Six to zero in three months , and it has held across repeat checks since. The filing is still public where it always was. It is no longer the first thing anyone reads. A filing is public record. Being defined by it is a choice somebody else made. How we measured it. All six page-one results were legal aggregators republishing the filings. Removed where eligible, outranked where not. Client specifics under NDA. Every case study we publish is anonymized, and every figure on this page came out of the client's own account or a dated live check. We do not publish a number we cannot show you the source of. Court Record Removal This is the service behind the work on this page. It explains what we actually do, what you get, and what it costs. See the service → © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## Reclaiming your life after a federal case.
URL: https://discoverability.co/case-studies/clearing-federal-record/

Case Study / Justice-impacted Reclaiming your life after a federal case. A judge handed down 48 months. Google handed down a life sentence. Someone who had paid their debt in full was still being introduced, by a search engine, as the worst day of their life . This is the work we are proudest of. 9 to 0 Negative results on page one 6 months To a clean first page Page one Owned by accurate content Negative results on page one At intake At intake: 9 9 Six months Six months: 0 0 Count of negative results appearing on the first page of Google for the client's name, at engagement start and after six months. The zero bar is drawn at a minimum width so it stays visible. How to read this Nine of the ten things a stranger saw were about the case. Six months later, none of them were. Aggregators came down where they were eligible; real journalism was outranked rather than touched. The problem The sentence ended. The search results did not. Nine negative results held page one for their name, so every employer, landlord, and new acquaintance met the case before they met the person. What we did We removed what was eligible, which meant the aggregators republishing the filings. We never asked a news outlet to unpublish a true story , and we never faked anything. For the rest, we built accurate current material and made it rank. Where it landed Nine to zero in six months , with page one owned by accurate content about who they are now. The record still exists exactly where it always did. It is simply no longer the introduction, and it is no longer what a stranger meets first. You already served the sentence. We work on the part that did not end. How we measured it. Aggregators removed where eligible; real news outranked, never faked or removed. Details under NDA. Every case study we publish is anonymized, and every figure on this page came out of the client's own account or a dated live check. We do not publish a number we cannot show you the source of. Personal Reputation Management This is the service behind the work on this page. It explains what we actually do, what you get, and what it costs. See the service → © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## Same orders, half the ad spend.
URL: https://discoverability.co/case-studies/ecommerce-ad-spend/

Case Study / E-commerce Same orders, half the ad spend. A household-cleaning brand on Shopify had run Google Ads through an outside agency since 2017, quietly losing money on it . We took control of the account, cut the media budget by more than half without losing a single order per month, and rebuilt brand search until every dollar going into it came back more than three times over . 54% Less media spend, at the same order volume 2.1x Better cost per completed order 3.18x Return on ad spend on brand search, rebuilt from 0.80x Brand search: tracked return on ad spend 2024 2024: 0.80x 0.80x 2026 2026: 3.18x 3.18x The 2024 figure is the account's tracked return on ad spend when we took it over. The 2026 figure is the brand search campaign across the 30 days to 2026-09-07: $434.48 spend against $1,381.76 in tracked conversion value. Measured on completed Shopify purchases only; cart-adds and checkout-starts excluded. How to read this Every dollar going into the account was returning 80 cents when we took it over. Brand search now returns 3.18x . That is the campaign we have tooled and re-tooled the longest, and it is where the compounding shows up. The problem The account had been running on someone else's autopilot since 2017. Spend went out every month, orders came in, and nobody had checked whether the two were related . An account graded on clicks looks fine in that state for years. What we did We took the account over and rebuilt it around completed Shopify purchases rather than clicks or cart-adds. Then we cut the media budget by more than half, watching order volume the whole way down to find where performance actually started to move. Where it landed Same monthly order volume on 54% less media spend , and cost per completed order 2.1x better . Brand search, the campaign we have rebuilt the most, now returns 3.18x on every dollar. The money we stopped spending was money that had never been buying anything. Most ad accounts are graded on clicks. We grade them on completed orders. How we measured it. Completed Shopify purchases only; cart-adds and checkout-starts excluded. 2024 figure is account-level tracked return on ad spend at takeover. 2026 figure is the brand search campaign over the 30 days to 2026-09-07, from a live account pull. Client anonymized. Every case study we publish is anonymized, and every figure on this page came out of the client's own account or a dated live check. We do not publish a number we cannot show you the source of. Ad Management This is the service behind the work on this page. It explains what we actually do, what you get, and what it costs. See the service → © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## The record was expunged. Google didn't care.
URL: https://discoverability.co/case-studies/expunged-record-still-online/

Case Study / Expungement The record was expunged. Google didn't care. The court expunged her case years ago. The internet never got the memo. One local news article, still the number one result on her name, and about nine broker listings standing between her and a clean search. #1 to gone The arrest article, once the top result for her name 8 days From inbound to the article down 0 of 281 Court-aggregator records checked that were still hers Data broker listings carrying her details At intake At intake: about 9 about 9 After After: 0 0 Broker listings found carrying her details at intake, and after the removal work. Separately, we checked 281 court-aggregator records and confirmed none of them were hers. The news article, which was the number one result for her name, came down eight days after first contact. Live search verification 2026-07-23. How to read this The article was the headline problem and it came down in eight days . The broker listings were the quieter one: about nine of them , each rebuilding the picture the court had already erased. The problem A court expunged the case years earlier. The article about the arrest was still the number one result for her name , with roughly nine data broker listings behind it repeating the details. What we did We documented the expungement and took it to the publisher under their own correction policy, then worked the broker listings in parallel rather than waiting for the article to resolve first. Where it landed The top result was gone in eight days. We then checked 281 court-aggregator records and confirmed none of them were hers . Her name searches clean. An expungement clears the record. Somebody still has to clear the internet. How we measured it. Live search verification 2026-07-23, client file and engagement ledger. Client specifics under NDA. Every case study we publish is anonymized, and every figure on this page came out of the client's own account or a dated live check. We do not publish a number we cannot show you the source of. Court Record Removal This is the service behind the work on this page. It explains what we actually do, what you get, and what it costs. See the service → © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## An imposter site, dead in days, not months.
URL: https://discoverability.co/case-studies/imposter-site-takedown/

Case Study / Impersonation An imposter site, dead in days, not months. A pixel-for-pixel clone of a pre-IPO mining company's website appeared online, carrying the company's real street address and a working contact form collecting enquiries meant for the real business. It had been live for months before anyone noticed. Once we saw it, it did not get quietly de-indexed. The host pulled the whole site down and banned the operator. Hard removal The site taken down at the host, not de-indexed from search Banned The operator's account terminated, more than the one clone Days From engagement start to offline, after months undetected What actually happened to the clone Months The clone was live and collecting enquiries through a working contact form, using the company's real street address. Nobody knew it existed. Day one We built the evidence package: the copied assets, the false address use, and the harvesting form, filed against the host's and registrar's own abuse policies . Days later The host removed the entire site and terminated the operator's account. Not a de-indexing, not a demotion, not a takedown of one page. Since It has never come back , and the operator lost the account they would have rebuilt it on. The company is monitored now, so the next one surfaces in hours. Dates and the removal outcome are from the engagement record; registrar and host correspondence and the evidence package are on file. Client specifics under NDA. How to read this There is a real difference between hiding a fake site and deleting one . De-indexing leaves it live for anyone with the link, and the operator simply spins up another. A hard removal at the host takes the site off the internet, and banning the account takes away the place they would have rebuilt it . The part worth fixing is the first row. The takedown was fast. The months nobody noticed were not, and that gap is the entire argument for monitoring. The problem A clone of the company's site, matched pixel for pixel, using its real street address and a working contact form that was harvesting enquiries intended for the real business. It had been live for months, in front of investors and customers, during a pre-IPO window. What we did We documented the copied assets, the false use of the address, and the harvesting form, then took it to the host and registrar under their own abuse policies rather than sending a letter and hoping. Documentation is the whole difference between a takedown that takes days and one that takes months. Where it landed The host removed the entire site and banned the operator's account. Not a de-indexing, which would have left the clone live for anyone holding the link. It has never reappeared, and the company is now monitored so the next attempt surfaces in hours rather than months. The takedown took days. Nobody noticing took months. We fix the second part. How we measured it. Removal outcome, dates, and account termination from the engagement record; registrar and host correspondence and the evidence package on file. Client specifics under NDA. Every case study we publish is anonymized, and every figure on this page came out of the client's own account or a dated live check. We do not publish a number we cannot show you the source of. Monitoring This is the service behind the work on this page. It explains what we actually do, what you get, and what it costs. See the service → © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## From nearly-invisible to #1 in their market.
URL: https://discoverability.co/case-studies/local-business-google-maps/

Case Study / Small business From nearly-invisible to #1 in their market. A Florida weight-loss clinic with two busy locations was drawing about 5,000 search impressions a month and fewer than 50 clicks . It had two location pages, and both sat outside the top 10 for the terms that mattered. We rebuilt the site the way AI reads the web, and the searches followed. 533 Clicks from search in ten weeks, up from under 50 36,753 Search impressions across the same ten weeks #1 Brand-and-city searches, in both cities Clicks from search, as a monthly rate Prior site Prior site: under 50 under 50 After launch After launch: about 230 about 230 The published figure is 533 clicks across the ten weeks from 2026-05-16 to 2026-07-21. It is expressed here as a monthly rate so it can be compared with the prior site's monthly baseline of under 50. Post-launch data from Search Console. How to read this Same business, same two locations, roughly five times the traffic from search . Nothing about the clinic changed. What changed is that search engines could finally tell what it was and where it was. The problem Two busy locations, and almost nobody could find either one. The site had two location pages and both ranked outside the top 10 for the terms their customers were actually typing. Roughly 5,000 impressions a month were turning into fewer than 50 clicks. What we did We rebuilt the site around how search engines and AI assistants actually read a local business : real location pages, clean technical structure, and content that answers the questions people ask before they book, city by city. Where it landed In the ten weeks after launch: 533 clicks from search against 36,753 impressions, and #1 for brand-and-city searches in both cities . The demand had been there the whole time. Nothing was pointing it at them. We rebuild the site the way search and the assistants actually read it, city by city. How we measured it. Pre-launch baseline from the clinic's prior site; post-launch figures from Search Console, launch 2026-05-16 through 2026-07-21. Regulated category: we report rankings and build work, never treatment outcomes. Client specifics under NDA. Every case study we publish is anonymized, and every figure on this page came out of the client's own account or a dated live check. We do not publish a number we cannot show you the source of. Website Design and Development This is the service behind the work on this page. It explains what we actually do, what you get, and what it costs. See the service → © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## A new business, discoverable from day one.
URL: https://discoverability.co/case-studies/new-business-launch/

Case Study / New business A new business, discoverable from day one. Most companies wait until there is a problem to think about search. This one came to us before launch , so the first thing the world found was the story they wanted told. Pre-launch Page one built before the name went public Day one Brand and founder search owned at launch AI-ready Assistants describe the company correctly What existed, and when Before launch The site, the founder's presence, the profiles, and the source material, all built and indexed while the name was still private . Launch day Brand and founder search already owned by the company's own pages , rather than by directories and scrapers filling an empty result. Since The assistants describe the company correctly, because the accurate version is the only version that was ever there . A sequence, not a measurement. There is no before-and-after series here on purpose: the entire point of this engagement was that there was never a bad before-state to chart. Brand and founder results were reviewed weekly through the launch window. How to read this Every other case study on this site is a repair job. This one is the version where nothing had to be repaired. An empty page one is not neutral. Left alone, it gets filled by directories, scrapers, and whoever writes about you first, and then you are spending money arguing with all of it. Doing the work before launch cost a fraction of what any of the repairs on this site cost , because there was nothing to undo. The problem A new company with no search footprint at all. An empty page one is not neutral : it gets filled by directories, scrapers, and whoever writes about you first, and then you are arguing with it. What we did We built the site, the founder's presence, the profiles, and the source material before the name was public , so the accurate version was already in place when people started looking. Where it landed Brand and founder search owned on day one , and the assistants describe the company correctly rather than guessing. Nothing had to be undone later, which is the cheapest version of this work by a wide margin. The cheapest reputation work is the kind you do before you need it. How we measured it. Brand and founder results reviewed weekly through the launch window. Client specifics under NDA. Every case study we publish is anonymized, and every figure on this page came out of the client's own account or a dated live check. We do not publish a number we cannot show you the source of. SEO and AI Optimization This is the service behind the work on this page. It explains what we actually do, what you get, and what it costs. See the service → © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## Contact
URL: https://discoverability.co/contact-us/

Contact Tell us what you’re up against. Send the name, business, podcast, or link. Tell us what is happening and what you want to change. Name Email Organization (optional) Website, profile, or search result (optional) What can we help with? (optional) Select a topic Ad Management Content Removal Court Record Removal Local SEO Monitoring Personal Information Removal Personal Reputation Management Podcast Growth Press Placements Review Management SEO and AI Optimization Website Design and Development Wikipedia Page Creation and Citations Something else What should we know? Leave this empty By sending this form, you agree to our privacy policy . Send message → This form needs JavaScript. Email team@discoverability.co . Prefer email? A person on our team reads your message and replies by email. Not a bot, not a ticket queue. team@discoverability.co → Already working with us? Client login → © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## Who We Work With
URL: https://discoverability.co/for/

Who We Work With Being findable used to mean a website and a search result. Now it means search engines, AI models, agents, review sites, directories, and whatever arrives next. The list keeps growing, and none of it maintains itself. We do that work for people, businesses, and podcasts, and we tell you plainly what is worth doing and what is not. Whoever you are, we have a solution for you. People → Your name is a search result before it’s a conversation. We go after old coverage that outranks your current work , personal info sitting on data broker sites, and the gaps where nothing accurate exists. We file removals, build pages worth ranking, and give AI models something accurate to repeat. Founders, executives, and private individuals. Businesses → Customers decide before they ever call you. So we build a website that explains what you actually do , put it in front of the people searching for it, and fix the listings and reviews they check on the way. Small businesses, startups, and professional practices all get judged on what Google shows first , and that part we can change. Podcasts → Your catalog is worth more than a play button. We turn episodes into pages that can be found : transcripts, guest and topic pages, and notes built to surface in search and AI answers. People looking for your guests and your subjects arrive at your show instead of somewhere else, long after release week. Independent shows and networks. Special circumstances Some situations don’t fit neatly on a service page. Tell us what you’re up against and we’ll tell you what can move. We don’t need much to get started. A name, a link, or whatever you’ve got. Let’s talk → © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## For Businesses
URL: https://discoverability.co/for/businesses/

For Businesses Make sure people can find your business exactly when they need it. Customers search, read the reviews, ask an AI what you do, and frankly, decide who they’re going with before they ever call you. All of that happens without you in the room. We work on the part you can change: what comes back, whether it’s accurate, and whether it reaches the people actually looking for what you sell. SEO and AI Optimization → We build the pages that answer what your customers are actually typing, fix the technical work holding them back, and give the AI platforms accurate, well-sourced material about your company. When someone asks an AI what you do, that is what it repeats. Ad Management → Campaign structure, budgets, audiences, search terms, and the landing pages they point at, managed month over month. We manage your ads in a way that compounds progress instead of restarting from scratch every quarter. Review Management → Reviews are the last thing a customer reads before deciding. We file the removal requests worth filing, write the public responses that don’t make things worse, and build a process for asking happy customers at the moment they’re most likely to say yes. There’s usually more to it. When your customers are searching from down the street, our local SEO service puts you in the map pack where they’re actually looking. When something inaccurate is ranking for your company, we go get it taken down with content removal . When you’ve got something to share with the world, we make sure it’s placed in major outlets with our press placements service, and you only pay for what we land. And monitoring tells you the day any of it changes. Start with your business. Tell us what you sell and who should be finding you. We don’t need much more than that to tell you where you’re losing customers. Let’s talk → © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## For People
URL: https://discoverability.co/for/people/

For People Make sure people find the person you are today. Your name gets searched before you’re ever in the room. For a job, a deal, an investment, a first meeting. What comes back is usually a few years out of date, and sometimes it’s the worst stretch of your life sitting at the top of page one. We work on what’s inaccurate, what’s exposed, and what’s missing. Most of it can move. We’ll tell you which parts. Website Design → Your own site, on your own domain. A current biography, the work you want seen, and a clear way to reach you. It ranks for your name and it says exactly what you decide it says. Every client we work with gets one, because it is the foundation everything else sits on. Personal Information Removal → Your address, your phone number, and your relatives are sitting on people-search sites right now. We find the listings, file the opt-outs, and check back, because most of those sites repost you within a year. Content Removal → Old articles, aggregator pages, and posts that should have come down years ago but never did. We file the removal requests, chase down the syndicated copies, and build accurate pages to take the spot of anything that stays put. You will know which is which up front. There’s usually more to it. When your case is still sitting on the legal aggregators, we chase down the copies one site at a time with court record removal . If you want to build a presence on the most important platform on the internet, we can help you create a Wikipedia page or get your content featured throughout it. If you haven’t taken control of the narrative about you online, we help you get a foothold with your own personal website . And when you want to know the day any of it moves, monitoring means you hear it from us first. Let’s get started. It’s where most of this begins. We look at everything that comes back for your name, then tell you what moves first and what it takes to move it. Reputation Management → © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## For Podcasts
URL: https://discoverability.co/for/podcasts/

For Podcasts Your back catalog is worth more than a play button. Every episode you have ever published is a conversation somebody is searching for right now, by guest, by topic, by the exact question you spent forty minutes answering. Inside a listening app, none of that is findable. We turn each episode into a page the open web can actually read, so the show keeps working long after release week. We ended up doing so much of this that we built a service for it, called poddisco. Episode Pages → Every episode gets a real page on the open web , built around the guest, the subject, and the questions people actually type. Each one can rank on its own instead of hiding behind your feed. Transcripts → The spoken conversation becomes readable text, which is the only version search engines and AI can read at all . Forty minutes of audio nobody could find becomes eight thousand words that can be. Show Websites → A site that is yours, not a directory listing . Browsable by guest and by topic, fast on a phone, and built so somebody who arrives for one episode finds three more before they leave. There’s usually more to it. Guests are the reason most people find a show, so we make sure every guest name leads somewhere on your site instead of somewhere else. When your show gets written about, press placements put the story in front of the right desks. And monitoring tells you when a guest, an episode, or the show itself starts showing up somewhere new, including in what the AI assistants say when somebody asks for a podcast about your subject. This runs through poddisco. Podcast work has its own service, its own team, and its own pricing at $49 a month . Everything above happens there. Go to poddisco → © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## Free SEO resources and guides
URL: https://discoverability.co/guides/

Guides Free SEO resources and guides Removal routes, opt-out forms, and the search and AI work that sits behind them. Each one names the site, what it actually asks for, and where it stops working. Nothing here is gated and nothing asks for your email. We keep them current because we use them, and if you would rather not do it yourself, that is what the services are for. Court record removal: what actually comes down → You searched your name, found your case on a site you'd never heard of, sent the removal request, and it worked. Then you searched again and the case was still there, this time on Justia and UniCourt. One court case becomes a page on every site that reads the same public feed , and there are at least eight of those sites. Each one is a separate request with its own rules. Personal information removal: a dozen sites, a dozen forms, and they repost → You found your home address on a site you'd never heard of, filed the opt-out, and it came down. Then you searched again and it was sitting on four more. These sites all build from the same public records and the same third-party suppliers , so one address becomes a dozen listings, each with its own form, its own proof rules and its own way of failing quietly. Here's the order to work them in. Content removal: who published it decides what comes down → You found five pages carrying the same story and you're about to send five copies of the same letter. Every one of those sites decides for itself what comes down, and the five policies have nothing in common. A mugshot site takes a court order. A news desk takes a correction. A federal press office takes neither. Sort the list by who published each page before you write anything, because that's what decides your route. Search and AI visibility: what you actually control → You searched your name in Google, then asked ChatGPT the same question and got a different answer citing somebody else. Ranking in a list of links and being quoted in a generated answer are two separate jobs , decided by different crawlers and diagnosed in different places. Nothing on the AI side takes a submission, so the work is access first, then a page worth quoting. Here's the order. Reputation management: four problems on one page → You searched your name and found a broker listing, a news story nobody is taking down, an old job title Google still shows, and nothing you own. That's four separate problems on one page of results , and each one answers to a different request. Most people work whichever one scared them first, which is why the page never really changes. Here's how to sort them, and the order that makes the work hold. Making a podcast findable: the free afternoon, then the catalog → Your show is findable in the apps and nowhere else. Apple and Spotify each run their own search, and neither one reaches the open web , so the guest you had on last spring gets searched by name every day and your episode isn't what comes back. There's an afternoon of free platform work, and then there's the catalog. These guides run in that order , and this page says which one is yours. Search guides All 60 Record types 4 News and articles 11 Search and AI 6 Wikipedia 4 Podcasts 5 Remove your record from DocketBird → DocketBird takes your case down free and immediately, but its request page is unlinked. The exact URL, the card name-match, and the mail-in route. How to remove your record from CourtListener → One free contact-form request gets your CourtListener page blocked from search engines. What to paste in, which URL to send, what deletion takes. How to remove your record from UniCourt → UniCourt's redaction request is free but narrow. Who can file it, the four factors it weighs, the document to upload, and the 30-day wait. How to remove your record from CaseMine → CaseMine has no removal form. The one email to send, the exact URL it needs, and the family-law rule that refuses most requests. How to remove your record from PacerMonitor → PacerMonitor publishes no removal policy. The one email address, what belongs in it, and the Rule 5.2 motion that does the real work. How to remove your record from Justia → Justia's four-field form is meant to block a URL from search, not delete it. What to paste in it, where to send it, and how to check the block held. How to remove your record from Trellis → Trellis redacts your name from a public docket for free, no court order needed. Where the request starts, what to attach, and what it won't fix. How to remove court records from Google → Start with the sites holding your case, not Google. The four free forms, the order to send them in, and what each one really does. How to remove bankruptcy records from Google → A bankruptcy petition puts your street address online too. The free de-index request at each republisher, what UniCourt needs, and the 60-day wait. How to remove eviction records from Google and tenant screening reports → Pull your tenant screening file, dispute it in writing with each company, and check whether your state seals the eviction case at all. How to remove DUI records from Google → Get the certified court order, then work the mugshot page, the screening companies, and Google. What each one takes off a DUI, and what it won't. Remove small claims records from Google → Check your court deadline first, then file with UniCourt, Trellis and judyrecords: the exact forms, what to attach, and what each one takes down. How to remove arrest records from Google → The certified order to send, the free Mugshots.com request, and the one Google condition that gets most arrest removals denied. How to remove divorce records from Google → Two free redaction forms, no court order and no fee, are the first move. Then the court file, then Google. What comes off, and what never does. Why your expunged record is still showing online → Your order binds the clerk, not the websites. Which free request each site takes, what proof goes with it, and the point where none of it works. Reputation management after an arrest → Work an arrest record in order: the certified court order first, then the publisher, your state statute, Google, and every screener. How to use Google's removal tools on a court record → Google has no removal category for a court record. Which forms move one anyway, what to send with each, and what stays live after Google says yes. How to remove your record from vLex and Fastcase → Mail contentremovals@clio.com for a vLex or Fastcase case page, use the Docket Alarm form for dockets, and expect a refusal on a published opinion. How to remove your info from Intelius → One Intelius opt-out also clears TruthFinder, Instant Checkmate and US Search. The steps, and the verification loop that stops it. How to remove your info from TruePeopleSearch → TruePeopleSearch says opt-outs need no verification, but one in three gets denied. The form, the phone route, and why your listing comes back. How to remove your info from BeenVerified → BeenVerified hides your listing, it doesn't delete it. The real opt-out URL, the email route when the form won't load, and the eight sister sites. How to remove your info from FastPeopleSearch → FastPeopleSearch asks for a name and an email, no ID. The emailed link dies at 24 hours, and the cookie opt-out is a second, separate step. How to remove yourself from Spokeo: one listing at a time, and it comes back → Spokeo's opt-out takes a profile URL and an email, one listing at a time. The form, the confirmation-email gate, and the site it doesn't cover. How to remove your listing from Radaris: one record at a time, People Search only → Radaris blocks one record per opt-out, deletes nothing, and covers People Search only. The real form URL, the confirmation step, and what comes back. How to remove your info from PeopleFinders → PeopleFinders emails you the real removal form and that link dies in 24 hours. The two-stage opt-out in order, and the failure that leaves it up. How to remove your info from Instant Checkmate → Instant Checkmate's free suppression tool also covers TruthFinder, Intelius and USSearch. The steps, and the verification that strands people. How to remove your info from TruthFinder: the form moved, and one request covers four sites → TruthFinder's opt-out moved to PeopleConnect's Suppression Center. One free request covers four sites. The steps, and what quietly undoes it. How to make your home address unsearchable → Google will hide the page carrying your home address, free and without ID. It won't delete it. The exact requests, in the order that works. How to remove your info from Whitepages → Whitepages removal is free and needs no ID, but it needs a phone call. The five screens, the no-phone route, and what to check after. How to remove your info from MyLife: one form, and a State dropdown that decides how hard it is → MyLife's opt-out lives at /privacyrequest, not /privacy. Set the State dropdown first, and expect suppression rather than deletion. Schema markup, and what it actually buys you → What schema markup does, the two blocks to copy, the two types Google retired, and how to check whether any of it worked. Search and AI How to remove your mugshot from Google: the free request that deletes it, and the form that comes back denied → The free Mugshots.com request that actually deletes, the Google condition most booking photo removals fail, and the image step people skip. News and articles How to remove your mugshot from Mugshots.com: two email addresses, and only one of them removes anything → Mugshots.com removal is free and email only. One address removes the record, the other only adds your disposition. Get your ID out of the URL first. News and articles How to remove your mugshot from BustedNewspaper: one hidden form, four accepted dispositions → BustedNewspaper's removal form is hidden and accepts four dispositions only. The exact fields, the 3 MB cap, and what to do when nothing happens. News and articles How to remove your mugshot from JailBase: the site is 404ing, so today's job is the Google result → jailbase.com is 404ing on every page. Clear the leftover Google result today, and file the free per-record opt-out when the site comes back. News and articles Which states ban mugshot removal fees: six order a takedown, five only pay you damages → Six states make a mugshot site take the photo down. Five only ban the fee. The state you were arrested in decides which letter you send. News and articles How to remove an IRS press release from Google: read the status code first → IRS Criminal Investigation releases before August 2021 already 404. Read the status code first, then file the one free Google request that works. News and articles How to remove a DOJ or U.S. Attorney press release from Google → DOJ publishes no removal process. The district contact who can edit the page, what to send with your order, and the two forms that refuse you. News and articles How to remove an FBI press release from Google: check who owns the page first → Open the release and watch the address bar: fbi.gov or justice.gov decides who can take it down. There's no form, so here's who to write to. News and articles How to remove a news article from Google → Google won't pull a live news story. The corrections request that works, the four search paths, and California's 20-day clock on a false one. News and articles How to remove a Reddit post or comment about you → Reddit only removes what breaks its rules, and there's no defamation rule. The routes that work, plus the Google step that moves the result. News and articles How to take down an imposter website → Host first, registrar second. Abuse forms that work, what makes a report actionable, and why a clone that steals nothing isn't the registrar's job. News and articles Does Bing SEO matter? Twenty minutes of it does → Bing is 9% of US search and 13% on desktop. The twenty-minute setup worth doing, the IndexNow toggle, and the work nobody should bill you for. Search and AI How to rank on Brave Search: your Google position doesn't carry over → Brave runs its own index, so your Google position doesn't apply. The re-fetch tool, the robots rule that blocks it, and how to get a URL delisted. Search and AI How to get cited by ChatGPT, and what you actually control → There is no ChatGPT submission form. Allow OAI-SearchBot in robots.txt, check the firewall for 403s, and track referrals with utm_source=chatgpt.com. Search and AI How to appear in AI search results: there's nothing to submit → No form, no submission. The crawler names that decide whether Google, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot and Claude can cite you, and how to check each. Search and AI Perplexity citations, and what you can actually get changed → There's no Perplexity removal button. The answer report, the privacy form's two required dropdowns, and the crawler rules that move a citation. Search and AI How to clean up your search results before a job search → Google's monitor, the removal form, and your own background file, in the order that works. What each one hides, and what it will never touch. Record types What reputation management costs, and why nobody else will tell you → Our standard personal reputation package is $2,488, one time, published not quoted on a call. What it covers, and why no big firm posts a number. Record types How to remove your name from Google search results → There's no button that takes your name off Google. Every route works one URL at a time. The exact forms, in the order that gets results. Record types How to run opposition research on yourself → Audit yourself in four layers: search results, data brokers, your FCRA background file, and PACER. What each turns up, and who already pulled you. Record types How to get a Wikipedia page created: the sources decide, not you → The Articles for Creation route step by step: the notability gate that decides it, the paid disclosure you post before editing, and the wait. Wikipedia How to get a Wikipedia page for your company: the sources decide, not the draft → Wikipedia has nothing to apply for. Test your company against the source rules first, disclose who is paying you, then draft and submit through AfC. Wikipedia How to correct an error in your Wikipedia article → You shouldn't edit your own Wikipedia article. Disclose the connection, then post an edit COI request on the Talk page. The click path and wording. Wikipedia How to get a citation or link added to a Wikipedia article you don't control → You can't buy a link into an existing Wikipedia article. The one route is a disclosed edit request on its talk page, and here's exactly what to post. Wikipedia How to increase podcast downloads: four levers, and one of them takes five minutes → Only your host counts downloads. The RSS category fix, Apple's pitch form and its two-week rule, and the YouTube setup, in the order to do them. Podcasts How to rank higher in Apple Podcasts: the three fields, and the category that picks your chart → Apple publishes its own ranking inputs. The three fields Search reads, the category that decides your chart, and why review campaigns move nothing. Podcasts How to rank in Spotify podcast search: what you control, and what you don't → Claim the show at creators.spotify.com, get the 8-digit code out of your RSS feed, set the first category. What Spotify says ranks podcast search. Podcasts Why an AI assistant can't find your podcast: there's no text to read → Audio isn't indexable, so assistants have nothing to read. Publish one page per episode with the full transcript on a domain you own. Podcasts Your podcast needs a web address, not a website → Apple and Spotify don't require a website you own, only a working web address in one feed tag. How to check yours, and when pages are worth building. Podcasts No guide matches that yet. Tell us what you are looking for and we will write it. © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## How to appear in AI search results: there's nothing to submit
URL: https://discoverability.co/guides/appear-in-ai-search-results/

Home / Guides / Search and AI visibility: what you actually control Search and AI How to appear in AI search results: there's nothing to submit There's no form. Not one of the five takes an application, a submission or a registration to be cited in an AI answer, and Google states it flatly: there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode. What decides it is whether each engine's named crawler can reach your page, and whether that page is indexed. Both are checkable this afternoon , and here's the order to check them in. What you get: eligibility, not a placement You can make all five engines able to read, index and cite your page. That is the entire outcome available. No engine offers a placement, a guarantee or an acknowledgment, and Google says on its own AI features page that indexing and serving aren't guaranteed even when you meet every requirement . Not one of the five publishes how it chooses among the pages that qualify. What it costs: an afternoon, and no new files No ID, no fee, no application and nothing to submit. You need edit access to your robots.txt file, whatever dashboard fronts your site at Cloudflare or your host, and a Search Console login. Google closes the door on the file rituals by name: you don't need to create new machine readable files, AI text files, or markup to appear in these features. An llms.txt is not the price of admission. What stops it: a block you can't see Your robots.txt says allow and your CDN says 403. A bot management rule at Cloudflare, Akamai or your host turns the crawler away before robots.txt is ever read, and none of that shows from outside. Google's own best-practice line is to make sure crawling is allowed in robots.txt, and by any CDN or hosting infrastructure . Perplexity goes further and asks you to permit its published IP ranges as well. Confirm the page is indexed before anything else Google's AI surfaces run on ordinary Google Search eligibility and nothing else. The requirement is that your page is indexed and eligible to be shown in Google Search with a snippet . Open Search Console , run URL Inspection on the exact address you want cited, and read what comes back. If it isn't indexed, stop here. Nothing further down this page matters until that's fixed, and it's an indexing problem rather than an AI problem. The technical requirements are three and they're short. Googlebot isn't blocked. The page works , which means Google only indexes pages served with an HTTP 200 success status code. The page has indexable content , in a file type Google Search supports, not violating the spam policies. Meet those three and you're eligible, though Google's AI features page is clear that indexing and serving still aren't guaranteed . Copilot answers off the Bing index, so ask the same first question there with a different tool: sign in to Bing Webmaster Tools and confirm the URL is indexed . ChatGPT, Perplexity and Claude publish no index checker at all, which is why the crawler checks below are the only diagnostic you get on those three . Check that nothing is suppressing your snippet A snippet directive can remove you from AI Overviews and AI Mode while your rankings sit untouched , and it's the easiest thing on this list to inherit from somebody else's template. Google's robots meta tag documentation says nosnippet will also prevent the content from being used as a direct input for AI Overviews and AI Mode . A max-snippet value of 0 is equivalent to nosnippet. Set it to -1 and Google picks the length itself. View the page source and search it for nosnippet , max-snippet and noindex . Then check the response headers too, because the same rules can arrive as an X-Robots-Tag header , where nobody thinks to look. A page can read perfectly clean in the source and still be carrying the directive from the server. data-nosnippet is the one that hides in a template. It marks a passage rather than a whole page, it works on span, div and section elements only, and it does nothing at all on any other tag. Somebody wraps a boilerplate block in it, the template moves, and now it's sitting around the exact paragraph you want quoted. Search your source for data-nosnippet and read what's inside each one. There is no AI-only opt-out at Google. The directive that pulls you out of AI Overviews and AI Mode is the same directive that kills your regular search snippet, so this is one decision and not two. If you're here to be cited, you want none of these on the page . Get the bot names right, because the wrong one does nothing Three of these engines decide search visibility with a crawler whose name is not the one people block. The ones that govern citation are OAI-SearchBot for ChatGPT, PerplexityBot for Perplexity and Claude-SearchBot for Claude, alongside Googlebot and Bingbot for everything else. Open your own robots.txt in a browser right now and read every Disallow line against that list. OpenAI's documentation is direct about the consequence: sites that are opted out of OAI-SearchBot will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers , though they can still appear as navigational links. GPTBot is the training crawler , described as making the foundation models more useful and safe, and blocking it changes nothing about ChatGPT search. OAI-SearchBot didn't exist until late 2024 , so a rule written in 2023 can only have named GPTBot: a site that blocked by name is still open to ChatGPT search and thinks it isn't, while a site that disallowed every user agent has been shut out of it since the day the bot launched. Perplexity says PerplexityBot is designed to surface and link websites in search results on Perplexity and isn't used to crawl for foundation models. Anthropic splits the same way, with Claude-SearchBot navigating the web to improve search result quality and ClaudeBot doing the training crawl. Blocking one leaves the other running , so a single blanket rule is almost never what the person writing it meant. Google-Extended controls nothing about AI Overviews or AI Mode , and most published advice has this backwards in both directions. Google's crawler documentation says it manages whether your content may be used for training future generations of Gemini models, and that Google-Extended does not impact a site's inclusion in Google Search nor is it used as a ranking signal in Google Search . Blocking it won't remove you from AI Overviews. Allowing it won't get you in. The user-triggered fetchers ignore all of this. ChatGPT-User, Perplexity-User and Claude-User run when a person asks for a specific page. OpenAI's wording is that because these actions are initiated by a user, robots.txt rules may not apply , and Perplexity says its fetcher generally ignores robots.txt rules . An opt-out stops the index. It doesn't stop somebody who pastes your URL into a chat. Check the edge, more than the robots file robots.txt is not where blocks actually happen. Your file can say allow while Cloudflare, Akamai or your host's bot management hands the crawler a 403 or a challenge page, and none of that is visible from outside. Google puts it in its own best-practice list for AI features: make sure crawling is allowed in robots.txt, and by any CDN or hosting infrastructure . Pull your server and CDN logs and search the user agent field for the bot names. Read what you find in two ways. A bot that shows up and gets a 403 or a challenge page is being turned away at the edge, and that's a firewall rule rather than anything to do with your content. A bot that never appears at all hasn't reached you yet , which is more often a discovery or indexation problem than a block, though a WAF that drops requests before logging can look the same. Either way the next stop is your CDN's bot-management rules. Each vendor publishes its source addresses so you can confirm a hit was genuine: openai.com/searchbot.json , perplexity.ai/perplexitybot.json and claude.com/crawling/bots.json . Perplexity asks for both things , in its own instruction: allow PerplexityBot in robots.txt and permit requests from its published IP ranges . An allow line on its own doesn't finish the job when your firewall filters by address. Then test it yourself. Request your own page with curl, setting the user agent to each bot name in turn. A 403 back is a real finding: a user-agent rule is turning the bot away. A 200 back proves less than it looks , because the request came from your address and not the crawler's, so a firewall that filters by IP will wave you through and still block the bot. Only the logs settle that one. Copilot: pull NOARCHIVE, then ping IndexNow if you want Two directives govern whether Copilot can cite you, and one of them removes the link itself. Microsoft's September 2023 announcement is the published statement on it, written back when Copilot was called Bing Chat. NOCACHE means the content may be included in answers, with only the URL, snippet and title displayed. NOARCHIVE means the content will not be included in answers and will not be linked to in them. Carry both and Microsoft treats it as NOCACHE. NOARCHIVE is not a cache setting , whatever the name suggests, and plenty of sites carry one that somebody added years ago for a reason that had nothing to do with this. Search your source and your headers for it the same way you searched for nosnippet. No tag at all is full eligibility , so on this one, doing nothing is the correct configuration. Freshness is the only thing you can actively push here, and it isn't a request to be cited. IndexNow takes a GET to the endpoint carrying a url parameter and a key parameter, the key running between 8 and 128 characters , with an optional keyLocation when your key file doesn't sit at the site root. A 200 back means the URL was submitted. It promises nothing about whether or when anything gets indexed. What you can measure, and what nobody reports Google folds the AI surfaces into normal reporting with no breakout. Its documentation says sites appearing in AI features are included in the overall search traffic in Search Console, reported on in the Performance report within the Web search type. That's the whole of it. There's no AI Overviews row and no AI Mode filter, so anyone quoting you an AI Overviews click-through rate out of Search Console is reading a number that doesn't exist there . The other four report no AI citations to you at all. Bing Webmaster Tools gives you Bing search impressions and clicks, but Microsoft publishes no Copilot citation breakout, and OpenAI, Perplexity and Anthropic publish no publisher analytics of any kind. If you weren't cited, nobody tells you, and if you were, nobody tells you that either. So you check it by hand, on a schedule. Write down the questions a customer would actually type, run every one of them in each engine on the same day each month, and record whether you were named and which page got cited instead of yours. Never change the question list. A list that moves gives you a story instead of a measurement. If you're still not being cited There's no appeal, and it's worth knowing that before you go hunting for one. None of the five has a form, a support queue or an escalation path for inclusion in an AI answer, and nobody accepts the request. All of this also assumes pages you control : if the answers you want changed are about you personally and they're citing sites you don't own, none of these checks touch that, and it's separate work. Run the four checks in order and stop at the first failure. Is the URL indexed in that engine's underlying index. Is a snippet directive suppressing it. Is the named search bot reaching you at all, confirmed in your logs rather than assumed from your robots file. Does that bot specifically get a 200. The third one is where most of these end , and it's the only one you can't see from outside your own server. If all four pass and you're still not cited, there's nothing left to file. Not one of the five documents how it picks among the pages that are already eligible, so every published method for ranking in Perplexity or getting picked up by ChatGPT is inference rather than documentation. Price anybody selling you a guaranteed AI citation accordingly. What's left is ordinary work, and Google lists it as ordinary work rather than as an AI requirement: internal links so your content is easily findable, a great page experience, and important content available in textual form , supported by images and video where they apply, with structured data that matches the visible text on the page and current Business Profile and Merchant Center information. None of that is AI-specific and none of it is new. On this page Confirm the page is indexed before anything else Check that nothing is suppressing your snippet Get the bot names right, because the wrong one does nothing Check the edge, more than the robots file Copilot: pull NOARCHIVE, then ping IndexNow if you want What you can measure, and what nobody reports If you're still not being cited Written by Drew Chapin → Updated 2026-09-08 Rather not do this yourself? SEO and AI Optimization → Related guides Perplexity citations, and what you can actually get changed → Schema markup, and what it actually buys you → Nobody sells admission to an AI answer. Everything above is free and you can run all of it today. What takes longer is keeping five crawlers reaching a site that changes every week, reading the logs when one of them stops, and writing pages worth citing in the first place. That's our SEO and AI Optimization work, and it's quoted against your site rather than sold off a price list. Have us do it. Everything above, filed for you, chased for you, and reported back. One flat fee. See the service → Every guide we publish is free and ungated. Browse all of them , see what we do and what it costs , or read why we built this company . Written by Drew Chapin , who ran all of this on his own name first. © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## Schema markup, and what it actually buys you
URL: https://discoverability.co/guides/beginners-guide-to-schema-markup/

Home / Guides / Search and AI visibility: what you actually control Search and AI Schema markup, and what it actually buys you Schema markup is a block of JSON-LD in a script tag telling a machine what your page is. It has never been a ranking factor and nobody should sell it to you as one. What it buys is eligibility and legibility: a page that can show hours and a rating in a result, and an entity an AI model can resolve instead of guess at. Here are the two blocks worth writing, and how to tell if they worked. What it actually buys Eligibility and legibility, not position. Correct LocalBusiness markup lets a result show your hours and rating. Correct Organization markup lets a model resolve five loose references into one entity. Neither moves you up the page on its own, and any agency selling markup as a ranking lever is selling you something it cannot deliver. The failure nobody warns you about It is almost never a missing tag. It is a plugin writing an Organization block while your theme writes a second one with a different name and logo. Google resolves that by trusting neither, and nothing in Search Console announces it . The second failure is marking up content nobody can see: review stars in the code with no reviews on the page. Two types stopped paying In August 2023 Google cut FAQ rich results back to government and health sites and retired HowTo entirely . The markup is still legal and still parses. It just produces no result in Google. Write it if you want machines to read the structure; do not write it expecting a rich result. Write JSON-LD, in the head There are three ways to write structured data and only one worth using. Google recommends JSON-LD over the two older formats, Microdata and RDFa, and it is the only one that lives in a single block instead of being scattered through your markup. It goes in a script tag with type set to application/ld+json , in the head. That is the whole delivery mechanism. Start with Organization on the homepage Legal name, url, logo, telephone, postal address, and the profile links. The field people skip is @id , and it is the one that matters most: it is the identifier every other node on the site points back to. Add sameAs pointing at your LinkedIn company page, your Wikidata item, and anywhere else your name is already published. That is what collapses five loose references into one entity a model can resolve. One LocalBusiness per location page Each location page gets its own block, and parentOrganization carries the @id from the homepage Organization so the two are tied together rather than floating separately. Pick the narrowest subtype that is true. Dentist, Restaurant, MedicalBusiness, LegalService, HomeAndConstructionBusiness. There is one for most trades. What goes on the page around that markup is a different job: see the local search work . Match the rest of the types to what you sell Article on posts. Product with offers, price and availability if you have a store. Service on service pages. Person for a founder or author with a public profile. BreadcrumbList goes site-wide on every page below the homepage. A WebSite node carrying a SearchAction is what makes a site eligible for the sitelinks search box on its own brand result. Review and AggregateRating only where the ratings come from somewhere other than your own testimonials page. Publishing a rating you awarded yourself is the schema spam pattern that triggers a manual action. Speakable is news-publisher only, so most sites skip it. Validate twice, against the live URL Google's Rich Results Test tells you which features the page qualifies for. The Schema.org validator tells you whether the syntax is legal. They answer different questions and you want both answers. Test the live URL, never the pasted code. Search Console's URL Inspection tool shows you the rendered HTML Google actually received, which is frequently not what your CMS thinks it published. Measuring schema markup impact Schema gets your pages eligible for AI citation, but eligibility and actual citation are two different problems. AirOps is built for the second one. Its Insights layer tracks which URLs ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews are pulling from for the topics you care about, so you can see citation rate, mention rate, sentiment, and which competitors are being cited in your place. From there it ties those signals back to your Search Console and analytics numbers, and it can queue the writing needed to fill the gaps it finds. The loop is the point. A validated schema deployment stops being a hopeful bet and becomes something you can check afterward. Google Search Console and manual spot-checks You can also measure a version of this for free. It is slower, it samples rather than measures, and it will not tell you who got cited in your place, but it costs nothing to run. Rich result reports. The Enhancements section of Search Console shows rich result impressions and click-through rates over time. Compare CTR before and after you deploy. AI citation spot-checks. Pick fifteen questions a buyer would actually type, run each one in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI Overview, and record whether you are named and what got cited instead. Re-run the same fifteen monthly , because a moving question list turns this into anecdote. Then go back to it Markup breaks on plugin upgrades and theme changes , and Search Console's Enhancements report is where that surfaces. Recheck two to four weeks after any change, which is roughly how long the report takes to catch up. If the page underneath is thin, correct schema describes thin content accurately and that is all it does. Write the answer first. Mark it up second. On this page Write JSON-LD, in the head Start with Organization on the homepage One LocalBusiness per location page Match the rest of the types to what you sell Validate twice, against the live URL Measuring schema markup impact Google Search Console and manual spot-checks Then go back to it Written by Drew Chapin → Updated 2026-09-08 Rather not do this yourself? SEO and AI Optimization → Related guides How to appear in AI search results: there's nothing to submit → Perplexity citations, and what you can actually get changed → Markup ships inside the SEO scope we quote. Somebody has to write the JSON-LD, validate it against both tools, and read it again after the next theme update. That is a scope line, not a product, so it is quoted with the rest of the work rather than sold on its own. Have us do it. Everything above, filed for you, chased for you, and reported back. One flat fee. See the service → Every guide we publish is free and ungated. Browse all of them , see what we do and what it costs , or read why we built this company . Written by Drew Chapin , who ran all of this on his own name first. © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## How to clean up your search results before a job search
URL: https://discoverability.co/guides/clean-up-google-before-a-job-search/

Home / Guides / Reputation management: four problems on one page Record types How to clean up your search results before a job search Three free requests do most of the work, and none of them asks you to upload an ID. Google's monitor watches your name while you handle the rest, the removal form takes a list of URLs, and your own background file tells you what a hiring manager will actually read. The order matters, because a page you fix at the source needs Google's copy flushed separately. Here's the sequence, and what each request buys you. What you actually get Hidden from searches on your name, not deleted. Google's policy splits this in two: a full removal takes the page out of Search entirely, and a partial removal only stops it appearing for queries that contain your name or an identifier. Partial is the usual outcome, and for a job search it's usually enough , because a recruiter searches your name. The page stays live at the same address, and anyone with the link still opens it. What you hand over No ID upload anywhere in the Google process. The form wants documents about the pages, not documents about you: the exact URLs, your contact info as it appears on each page, your country, and an email address. The real price runs the other way. To have the monitor watch for you, you hand Google your addresses, phone numbers, maiden name and nicknames , and it will take your Social Security, passport and driver's license numbers too, though you don't have to give those. Every request here is free , and the time goes into collecting URLs, not filing them. What stops it working Google won't remove results from the sites a hiring manager trusts most. Its policy names educational or government institutions and newspapers as pages it considers valuable to the public, and its help page is blunt about what you'll see on screen: if a matching result comes from a site like that, you won't find a "Remove result" option at all . A news story, a court docket or a school page is outside this entire process, and refiling changes nothing. Turn on Google's monitor before you touch anything else Go to myactivity.google.com/results-about-you and sign in. There is no signed-out version of this tool , so you need a Google account before you start. Choose "Get started", or "Settings" if you've been here before, then enter your name and the personal info you want watched. In the Google app the path is your profile picture or initial, then "Menu", then "Results about you". Google lists the fields it accepts : Nickname, Maiden name, Multiple personal phone numbers, Multiple home addresses, Multiple email addresses. Enter every version of your name an old listing might carry , because the matcher keys off name plus information and a variant you skip is a result you never see. The same form will take your Social Security, passport and driver's license numbers, and you don't have to give those to make this work for a job search . Turn notifications on and leave it running while you do the rest. Google says a match arrives within a few hours and lands in the "To review" tab. Two limits worth knowing now: Google states these features are rolling out to users over 18 in certain markets and doesn't publish the market list, and an empty "To review" tab looks exactly like being clean . Work the To review tab, and the search page itself Open "To review" , select a result to expand it, and choose "Request to remove" . Anything you're happy to leave up gets "Mark as reviewed" instead. You can also file straight off a search page: click "More" on the result, then "Remove result", then "It shows my personal info and I don't want it there", then "Contact Info", work through the flow, and select "I'm done". Enter your contact info exactly as it appears on the result page , nickname and old address included. If a listing shows more than one type, Google says one type is enough and you don't need a second request for the same URL . A confirmation email arrives within the next few hours at the address on your Google account, so check spam before you assume it failed. Status lives under "Removal requests" , where every request reads In progress, Approved, Denied, or Undone, and opening one shows the link you flagged, the submission day and time, and a Request ID. Google publishes no review turnaround , only that an approved result can take a few more hours to leave Search. Anybody quoting you a date for a Google decision is making it up. File the form directly for everything the monitor misses The monitor only surfaces pages it can match to a name string, so plenty of what a recruiter finds will never appear in "To review" . Those go through Google's content removal form , which still asks for no ID. Required, in order: "Why are you requesting personal content removal from Google Search?" , where you pick "Content contains your personal information"; "Your country of residence"; then "Select the personal information you would like removed from Google search results" , where an ordinary people-search listing is "Address, phone number, and/or e-mail address"; then a box wanting your address, phone number or email address as they appear on the webpage; and "Google Search results page URLs", which wants the address of the Google results page itself, one per line. One required question stops people cold: "Is there malicious or threatening intent expressed directly in the content on the URL or domain (this practice is sometimes known as doxxing)?" For a plain listing the answer is No, and No does not disqualify you . Threat language belongs to Google's separate doxxing route, not to contact-information removal. That holds for the "Address, phone number, and/or e-mail address" option. Pick "Other personal information" and answer No, and the form does stop you, telling you the policy doesn't fit your request. "Specific content URLs" is required and takes one URL per line, up to 1,000 lines , so the profile, the print view and each relatives page each get their own line. "Search terms" is required on this path, not optional : one search term per line, up to 1,000 lines. It is where you name the search you are actually worried about, so write the queries a recruiter would type, more than your name. Answer "It's me", then give your name and email at the end. There is no anonymous option on this branch: your full name, a contact email address and your country of residence are all required before the form will submit. Mugshot and pay-to-delete sites take a different first answer Same form, different first option. Pick "Content is on a site with exploitative removal practices" , not the personal information branch. Choosing wrong here sinks the claim , because the exploitative path is the only one that asks the question your case rests on. Google states three requirements: you're a subject of the content in the URL you submit, the website is not a business review site, and the website requires payment to the site or other agencies to have the content removed . The form then asks, and it's required, "Has the website asked you to pay money to the site or to an agency for personal content removal?" It also requires you to write out how the site is exploitative, and it takes screenshots. Never pay the site. The demand for money is the evidence, so paying it hands away the strongest argument you have with Google, and if the listing does reappear at a different URL, that's a new request rather than a failed one. Screenshot the payment demand before you do anything else , because that's the upload the form wants. Fix what you own, then flush Google's copy of it Google won't remove information you can remove yourself, and it says so plainly: info on a social media page or a personal blog that you own is yours to take down. Edit or delete it at the source first. A removal request aimed at your own site does nothing except come back to you. Once the page is gone, or the content was deleted from the site and Google is still showing the old text, sign in to the Refresh outdated content tool , select "Request refresh" , use the "Page" tab, paste the URL and select "Submit". For a photo, find it at images.google.com, right-click the thumbnail, choose "Copy link address", then in the tool select "Request refresh", "New request", "Image", "Enter Copy link address", paste and "Submit". This is not a removal tool. Google's own note at the top of its Refresh outdated content help page: if you've already updated a live page, you don't have to fill out the form. It exists for content that was deleted from a site and still comes up in search results. Sending it a live, unchanged page spends the request and changes nothing. On LinkedIn, change your visibility settings before you rewrite a single line of your profile. They live at linkedin.com/mypreferences/d/categories/profile-visibility , which signs you in first. Two settings matter: your public profile is the version search engines index , and the setting that shares profile updates with your network is what tells your current employer you're looking . California: one request reaches over 600 brokers If you're a California resident, go to privacy.ca.gov/drop and select "Get started with DROP" . Three steps: "Step 1. Verify your eligibility", which runs through the California Identity Gateway and does not require you to create an account , with Login.gov offered as an option; "Step 2. Create your profile"; and "3. Submit your DROP request", which goes to over 600 registered data brokers at once . The dates matter more than the buttons. DROP launched January 1, 2026, data brokers only began processing requests on August 1, 2026 , and the state says it can take up to 90 days for status to show. By November 2026 every broker in DROP should have finished its initial cycle. After that, brokers must delete data every 45 days , which makes one request a standing scrub rather than a one-time favor. Follow it with "Check DROP status" , and don't read silence inside that window as failure. DROP is California only , and it only reaches companies registered as data brokers with the state. Everywhere else, and for anything that isn't a registered broker, each site is still its own opt-out. Pull your background check before an employer does The report that sinks an offer is not a Google result. Background screening is a separate system with its own rules, and the federal guidance is direct: an employer must ask for your written permission before getting the report, and if it may reject you based on that report, it has to give you a copy of the report and a notice of rights telling you how to contact the company that made it. Pull your own credit file first, free, at annualcreditreport.com or by calling 1-877-322-8228. Do it before you apply, not after a rejection , because corrections take time you won't have. If something on a background report is wrong, the guidance is specific: ask the background reporting company to fix it and to send a corrected copy to the employer, and tell the employer about the mistake yourself . The notice of rights is what names the company you write to. Then put a date two weeks out in your calendar and run the same searches again . A removal is bound to one URL, so a profile that reappears at a new address is a new request, not a failed one. If the page came down but the old title and text are still showing, that's the refresh tool above, not another removal. And a denial on a news story, a court docket or a government page isn't appealable through any of this : those come down at the source, at the court, or not at all. On this page Turn on Google's monitor before you touch anything else Work the To review tab, and the search page itself File the form directly for everything the monitor misses Mugshot and pay-to-delete sites take a different first answer Fix what you own, then flush Google's copy of it California: one request reaches over 600 brokers Pull your background check before an employer does Written by Drew Chapin → Updated 2026-09-08 Rather not do this yourself? Personal Reputation Management → Related guides How to use Google's removal tools on a court record → How to make your home address unsearchable → When hiding the link isn't the job File every one of these yourself today, because they're free and they work. When the result a hiring manager sees is a news story, a court docket or a school page that Google has already told you it won't touch, hiding it was never available and outranking it is the work. Our Personal Reputation Management package is $2,488 and covers the removals we can file plus the pages we build and rank in their place. Have us do it. Everything above, filed for you, chased for you, and reported back. One flat fee. See the service → Every guide we publish is free and ungated. Browse all of them , see what we do and what it costs , or read why we built this company . Written by Drew Chapin , who ran all of this on his own name first. © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## Content removal: who published it decides what comes down
URL: https://discoverability.co/guides/content-removal/

Home / Guides Guide hub Content removal: who published it decides what comes down You found five pages carrying the same story and you're about to send five copies of the same letter. Every one of those sites decides for itself what comes down, and the five policies have nothing in common. A mugshot site takes a court order. A news desk takes a correction. A federal press office takes neither. Sort the list by who published each page before you write anything, because that's what decides your route. What comes down, and what doesn't Two of these publishers will delete a page and three of them won't. A mugshot site removes the whole record when your court paperwork matches its list, and a web host will pull an imposter page. A news outlet corrects the story and leaves it up at the same URL. A federal press office publishes no removal process at all, so the realistic win there is an appended correction note or a de-index. Google's tools take a result out of search and never touch the page itself. What it costs you to do alone Every request on this page is free to send, and the price you pay is evenings. Mugshots.com answers in ten business days, BustedNewspaper gives you day 10, a JailBase opt-out runs 90 days, and a Justice Department webmaster may never answer at all. Each one is a separate letter in that site's own format, plus a trip to the clerk's counter for certified paperwork, plus a re-check after every site says it acted. The one route with a real price on it is a UDRP filing at $1,500 , and that's for a domain, not a page. The mistake that looks like failure Sending one request, in one format, to every site on your list. Google's exploitative-sites form comes back denied on a mugshot site that charges nothing, because that policy requires the site to demand payment. A Justice Department correction request waits 120 calendar days for a refusal , because press releases are exempt by name. A critical Reddit thread reported as harassment gets denied, because that rule doesn't shield public figures from criticism. Four denials in a row read like the whole thing is impossible. They mean four wrong forms. Build one list, then sort it by who published each page Search your full name in quotes, then your name with your city, then your name with the charge or the company. Go to page two, because that's where the sites you've never heard of live , and switch to the Images tab, since a booking photo ranks there separately from the page carrying it. Copy every URL into one list before you write to anybody. Then drop each URL into one of five buckets, because the bucket is the route : mugshot and booking sites, news outlets, government press offices, forums like Reddit, and imposter sites pretending to be you or your business. The bucket decides who you write to, what you send, and whether anything comes down at all. Work the buckets in the order below, not in the order Google ranked them. The mugshot sites publish real routes with real outcomes, so they clear first and they clear fastest. The government pages have no process anybody can invoke, so they sit at the bottom where a slow answer costs you nothing. Get the paperwork before you open a single form Most of these routes open on one document and close without it. Mugshots.com wants a court document signed by a judge, sealed by the court, and legible, all three. BustedNewspaper takes legal documentation of an expunged, dismissed, nol prossed, not guilty or sealed case, and says a letter from your attorney is accepted too. A news desk moves on a docket entry, a dismissal or a vacatur order, and never on your account of what happened. Pay the clerk for the certified copy before you file anything, because a docket printout off the county website isn't judge-signed and court-sealed , and that's the most common reason a good case gets refused. Scan it clean and keep it under 3 MB, which is BustedNewspaper's cap. Mugshots.com discards a document it can't read and sends no notification , so a bad scan looks exactly like a denial and you never learn which one it was. If the case is still open or the conviction stands, most of these doors aren't open to you yet. BustedNewspaper's reason menu has four values and no other option. Mugshots.com removes for six situations only. Finish the sealing or the expungement with a lawyer first and then come back, because the order is what makes the requests work rather than what makes them unnecessary. Mugshot sites first, because they publish real routes These are the fastest wins on your list and every one of them is free. Mugshots.com runs entirely on email, with two addresses doing different jobs: one takes the record down, the other only adds your disposition to a page that stays live. BustedNewspaper has a single hidden form that accepts four dispositions and nothing else. JailBase was 404ing on every page when we checked on September 8, 2026, so there the job today is clearing the leftover Google result rather than filing an opt-out you can't reach. If anybody asks you to pay, screenshot the demand before you do anything else. Six states put a removal deadline on the website itself: Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Oregon, Wyoming and Utah. Five more make the fee illegal without ever ordering a takedown: Arizona, California, Missouri, Virginia and Illinois. The state you were arrested in is the state whose law you use , and which of those two lists it's on decides whether you're mailing a letter or hiring a lawyer. File them in parallel and put each site's clock on a calendar the day you send it: ten business days at Mugshots.com, day 10 at BustedNewspaper, 90 days on a JailBase opt-out. A site that never answers is a no. Write it down as a no instead of leaving it open, because re-checking it every Tuesday for six months is the real cost of doing this alone. News desks: ask for the correction, not the takedown Google won't pull a live news story and there's no form for asking , so the page moves only after the outlet moves. Write to the corrections desk with three things: the exact URL, the sentence quoted word for word, and a primary document that contradicts it. Describing the article instead of pasting its link gets you a form reply. Ask for the smallest change that fixes the search result , and name it: a correction, an editor's note, a follow-up covering how the case actually ended, or your name off a routine crime brief. Opening with take it down gets refused as a category and spends the one exchange you get, and a lawyer's demand letter does the same damage faster by turning an editorial question into a legal one. What you're realistically getting is a corrected story at the same URL, which is what a published corrections log looks like when it works. If the story is false, check your state's clock today, because California's runs 20 days. That path is a lawyer's job and it's the only one in this bucket with a real price attached, so find out where the deadline sits before you spend two weeks writing letters. Government press releases: no process, so you're writing to a person Neither the Justice Department nor the FBI publishes a removal process, a deadline or an appeal. Open the release and watch the address bar first, because an fbi.gov URL that lands on justice.gov belongs to a U.S. Attorney's office and the FBI can't edit it. For an IRS release, read the status code before anything else: as of September 2026 the oldest one still live is from August 2021, and if yours already returns Page Not Found, one free Google request clears the stale result . Email the district office that published the page, attach a certified copy of the order that changed the facts, and include the exact URL, the headline and the date. Ask for a correction note appended to the page or a name redaction , because those are the only asks that sit inside a webmaster's ordinary editing authority. Neither Justice Department web form takes an attachment and both cap you at 2,000 characters, so the form can't carry your order and isn't meant to. Skip the Information Quality Act correction request that nearly every other page on this subject recommends. The exemption list names press releases, so you'd wait 120 calendar days for a refusal that never opens your document. Plan for a non-answer here: there's no service standard and nobody above the office to escalate to, which is exactly why these pages belong at the bottom of your list. Reddit and imposter sites, then Google, last on every one Reddit removes content that breaks one of its eight rules, plus copyright material, and there's no rule against a thread being unfair to you. Message the subreddit's moderators, because they can remove anything inside their own community and they're the fastest lever on an ordinary bad thread. Report to Reddit itself only where a rule was actually broken, and know that a removal leaves the URL alive either way. For an imposter site, report it to the host before the registrar , because a host can pull one page while a registrar acts on the whole domain or not at all. The registrar's abuse definition is a closed list of malware, botnets, phishing, pharming and spam, so a clone that copies your look and steals nothing isn't the registrar's job . Send that one to the host as a copyright complaint, or to UDRP, which is the only route that hands you the domain. Then tell Google, and do it last on every page you've actually moved. The Refresh Outdated Content tool is built for a page that has already changed, and a page that's gone can hold its ranking for weeks while Google gets around to re-crawling it. Skip that step and you'll swear the removal didn't work. What none of this moves, and what to do instead A true story that a real outlet stands behind isn't coming down, and nobody can sell you the takedown of one. A justice.gov page is a press office's decision and there's no procedure anyone can invoke on your behalf. On the mugshot sites a dismissal or an acquittal usually buys an update rather than a removal, and the policy says so plainly: the page, the photo and the URL all stay live with your disposition displayed on them. Google's tools de-index, they don't delete. The result leaves search, the page sits exactly where it was for anyone holding the link, and an approved outdated-content request expires once 180 days have passed. None of it reaches the sheriff's roster, the court file, or the wire copy somebody syndicated the morning the story ran. Where a page has no route, the work stops being removal and becomes building accurate material that outranks it . We'll tell you which of those two situations each URL is in before you pay for anything, because it changes what you should buy. On this page Build one list, then sort it by who published each page Get the paperwork before you open a single form Mugshot sites first, because they publish real routes News desks: ask for the correction, not the takedown Government press releases: no process, so you're writing to a person Reddit and imposter sites, then Google, last on every one What none of this moves, and what to do instead Written by Drew Chapin → Updated 2026-09-08 Rather not do this yourself? Content Removal → Related guides How to remove your mugshot from Mugshots.com: two email addresses, and only one of them removes anything → How to remove a news article from Google → How to remove a DOJ or U.S. Attorney press release from Google → One story, five publishers, five different letters. Send the free requests yourself today, because the mugshot sites and the corrections desks are one sitting each. When the same story is sitting on eight URLs, Content Removal is $499 to $1,999 per case, priced by what each host site's own policy allows. We find the copies you haven't found yet, file each one in that publisher's own format, chase the replies, and send you a written status on every URL . Where a page won't move, we build and rank the pages that take its place on your name. Have us do it. Everything above, filed for you, chased for you, and reported back. One flat fee. See the service → Every guide we publish is free and ungated. Browse all of them , see what we do and what it costs , or read why we built this company . Written by Drew Chapin , who ran all of this on his own name first. © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## Court record removal: what actually comes down
URL: https://discoverability.co/guides/court-records/

Home / Guides Guide hub Court record removal: what actually comes down You searched your name, found your case on a site you'd never heard of, sent the removal request, and it worked. Then you searched again and the case was still there, this time on Justia and UniCourt. One court case becomes a page on every site that reads the same public feed , and there are at least eight of those sites. Each one is a separate request with its own rules. The RECAP upload Your federal docket usually reaches the public web because someone with a PACER login read it. RECAP is a browser extension that copies every PACER page its user loads into a free public archive, so a lawyer researching your case at ten cents a page put it on CourtListener on the way through. The certified copy Every one of these sites wants a document, and a screenshot isn't one. Pay the clerk's per-page fee and the certification charge , both of them, before you file anything. A certified disposition or dismissal order is what turns a request into a removal, and it's the same document eight different sites will ask you for. Eight sites, eight policies CourtListener will block a case from search engines but won't delete the page , and it says so in writing. UniCourt takes requests only from a party, a guardian, or an attorney of record. PacerMonitor publishes no form and accepts three grounds by email. The request that works at one gets ignored at the next. Why one case ends up on a dozen sites Federal filings go out through PACER . State filings go out through county clerk portals. Neither one is what ranks on your name, because a clerk's portal hides its records behind a search form and Google can't crawl a search form. What ranks is the copy a private company made. Those companies read the same feeds in bulk, the day a case is docketed. A federal matter lands on CourtListener, PacerMonitor and often CaseMine. A state case lands on Trellis, UniCourt and sometimes Justia. DocketBird and vLex take their own cut. Nobody coordinates, so nobody knows what the others published , and the page they build is a plain URL carrying your name and the case caption in the title, in the exact order a search engine likes. This is the part people get wrong, and it's expensive. You cleared the site you found and the other seven never heard about it. A removal at DocketBird changes what your name returns only if DocketBird was the only site that had it, and it almost never is. The court's record, the copies, and Google's index Three different things sit behind one search result, and people spend money on the wrong one constantly. The court's record is the clerk's file , and only a judge moves it. The aggregator's copy is a page on a private company's website , and only that company moves it. Google's index is a listing that points at the copy , and it updates on Google's schedule rather than yours. Only the middle one is ours. We send requests to private companies who publish their own policies and decide their own outcomes. Nothing we file reaches the clerk's file or PACER, and no fee anybody charges you changes that. The index matters more than it sounds. A page that is already gone can hold its ranking for weeks while Google gets around to re-crawling it, which is why the last step of every removal is telling Google the page changed. Skip it and you'll swear the removal didn't work. What an expungement reaches and what it misses An expungement or a sealing order binds the court and the agencies holding the official record . It doesn't order a private website to delete anything, and no clerk sends a notice down the chain to Justia. The order was directed at a court. The websites holding a copy were never told, and most people find that out months after paying to close it. So the sequence runs the other way from how it feels. The expungement is what makes the removal requests work, not what makes them unnecessary. CourtListener's policy says deletion requires a sealing or expungement order from the court that issued the filing. DocketBird's free removal request is free precisely because the case was sealed or expunged. Your order is the document, and it opens doors that stay shut without it. If your case can be sealed, finish that with a lawyer before you spend a dollar on removals. We aren't a law firm and we don't file petitions. If your case is still open, wait. Nothing here is removable while it's live. Build the inventory before you send anything Search your full name in quotes. Then your name with the case number. Then the case number on its own, and go to page two, because page two is where the sites you've never heard of live. Save every URL in one list. Sort that list into three buckets while you're in it. Government sources move for a court order and nothing else. Private aggregators are the bucket that has a form , and that's the only bucket worth your time this week. Everything else, news stories and the mugshot sites that scrape booking logs, is a different job with different rules. Then go get the paper. Every request in the middle bucket wants the same package: the certified disposition or dismissal order, the case number, the court and county, the exact URL, and one line saying who you are in the case. One request per site, written to that site's policy There is no single form and no master switch. Each site publishes its own route and honors only that one. CourtListener takes a contact form and grants a search-engine block. UniCourt takes requests only from a party, a guardian, or an attorney of record. Trellis wants a named legal ground and redacts for free. PacerMonitor has no form and three grounds. CaseMine wants Removal Request in the subject line. Send them in parallel, not one at a time. One to four weeks per site is normal , and a site that never answers is a no. Write it down as a no instead of leaving it open, because an open item you re-check every Tuesday for six months is the real cost of doing this alone. Doing it yourself is completely possible, and every guide under this page is written so you can. What it costs you is the searching, the trip to the clerk's counter, eight separate requests written eight different ways, and the follow-up when half of them go quiet. Budget several evenings, not one. De-index at Google after the page changes The removal isn't finished until the search result is. Once a page is gone or your name is off it, submit the URL to Google's Refresh Outdated Content tool . That's the form built for a page that has already changed. The other two Google tools do different jobs and neither one removes a court record. The URL removal tool hides a live result temporarily and the page stays up the whole time. Results about you is built for contact details and doxxing, not dockets . Then watch it for 30 to 60 days. These sites re-scrape the courts, so a record that came down in March comes back in September under a different URL. A page that reappears has to be re-submitted, and that follow-up is the part almost nobody doing this alone keeps up with. What none of this moves A court file is public and stays public. The clerk's docket, PACER, the state judiciary site: those are permanent unless a judge says otherwise. An active conviction, a civil judgment and a federal bankruptcy filing are accurate, current and public, and no form reaches any of them. On CourtListener the ceiling is de-indexing, not deletion , and the page keeps its URL for anyone holding the link. Bulk data files and public APIs handed your docket to whoever downloaded them, and those copies carry no address to write to. Where a record isn't coming down, the work stops being removal and becomes building accurate material that outranks it . We'll tell you which of those two situations you're in before you pay, because it changes what you should buy. On this page Why one case ends up on a dozen sites The court's record, the copies, and Google's index What an expungement reaches and what it misses Build the inventory before you send anything One request per site, written to that site's policy De-index at Google after the page changes What none of this moves Written by Drew Chapin → Updated 2026-09-08 Rather not do this yourself? Court Record Removal → Related guides Remove your record from DocketBird → How to remove your record from CourtListener → The whole category, not one site. Court record removal is $199, one time , covering every aggregator we can reach instead of one site at a time, with twelve months of re-submission because the copies come back. Send us one listing and we'll tell you how many are out there. Have us do it. Everything above, filed for you, chased for you, and reported back. One flat fee. See the service → Every guide we publish is free and ungated. Browse all of them , see what we do and what it costs , or read why we built this company . Written by Drew Chapin , who ran all of this on his own name first. © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## Does Bing SEO matter? Twenty minutes of it does
URL: https://discoverability.co/guides/does-bing-seo-matter/

Home / Guides / Search and AI visibility: what you actually control Search and AI Does Bing SEO matter? Twenty minutes of it does Yes, but it's about 20 minutes of setup, not a program you fund. Bing was 8.92% of US search in August 2026 and 12.82% on desktop, so the traffic case is small and real. The better reason is Bing's AI Performance report, which counts how often AI answers cite your pages. Get the site verified, submit the sitemap, turn on IndexNow, then stop and spend nothing more. What you actually get Indexed on Bing, and on DuckDuckGo with it. Statcounter put Bing at 8.92% of US search across all devices in August 2026, and 12.82% on desktop , with DuckDuckGo adding 1.7% and 1.42% on top because it sources its links from Bing. That's roughly a tenth of US searches, about a seventh on desktop. It does nothing for your Google position , and it is not a traffic strategy. What it costs you About twenty minutes, no money, and one sign-in. Bing takes a Microsoft, Google or Facebook ID, and there's no fee and no plan. There is a contract, though: Bing's own text says that by default, when adding a site you are granting permission for use of all subdomains pursuant to the Bing PubHub Content License Agreement . Read that before you add a property you don't own. The real cost is on the fast path: importing from Google Search Console needs View-Only permission on that account, which Microsoft keeps to periodically validate your verification status and update sitemaps . That's a standing grant, so on a client's account, ask before you click. What stops it working Verifying one host and then submitting URLs for another. Verify the apex, submit a www address, and Bing answers URL is not related to your verified domain. Please verify URL before submitting. The bare domain, the www version, http and https are four separate properties in this tool. Verify the exact host your pages actually serve from , and if you serve on more than one, verify each of them. Check the number before you spend anything Google is 86.1% of US search and Bing is 8.92% on Statcounter's August 2026 figures , counting every device. On US desktop it's Google 81.99% and Bing 12.82% , which is the surface that matters if you sell to people sitting at their desks. Statcounter builds these from pageviews on its own tracker network, so quote it as an estimate with a date attached , never as a census. DuckDuckGo is the one honest addition, and it's smaller than the pitch. DuckDuckGo's own help page says it largely sources its traditional links and images from Bing, and DuckDuckGo is 1.7% of US search on all devices and 1.42% on desktop. That puts Bing's real reach at roughly 10.6% of US search, or about 14.2% on desktop . It's an addition, not a multiplier, and anyone stacking Yahoo's 2.74% on top of that is inflating the number , because Statcounter already counts Yahoo as its own engine. Worldwide the answer changes: Bing is 4.5% against Google's 91.1% , on the same source . If your customers are mobile-first or outside the US, still do the setup below, because it's twenty minutes and it's free. Then spend nothing further on Bing at any level , because none of these numbers pays for a second content program. Add the site by importing it from Search Console Sign in at Bing Webmaster Tools and click Add a site. Microsoft's own documentation says you can sign up using any Microsoft, Google or Facebook ID, so there's probably no new account to create. The screen you land on is headed Select one of the methods to add your site . Nothing in this guide costs money at any step. Take the import path, not the manual one. The card headed Already verified on Google Search Console? offers Import from Search Console , and its own selling points are No site verification required and Import sitemaps instantly . Bing pulls the list of sites you've already verified with Google plus their sitemaps, and you pick which ones to add. It does not import any of your Search Console analytics. Read the permission before you grant it. Bing asks you to sign in to Google Search Console with View-Only permission and says it will use that access to periodically validate your verification status and update sitemaps , which means it stays connected rather than reading once and leaving. On your own site that's a fair trade. On a client's Search Console, get their yes first , because you're attaching a third party to an account they own. If the import fails, verify with the meta tag Bing's own failure message tells you the next move. When it can't reach Google it says it was not able to fetch data from your Google Search Console account, then offers the manual route. Choose Add your site manually and you land on Choose one of the verification methods , which lists HTML Meta Tag , XML File , Add CNAME record to DNS and DNS auto verification . Any one of them is enough on its own. It's a menu, not a checklist. Take HTML Meta Tag on any site you can edit. Bing's instruction is to add the tag to your site's default or home page, and its error message checks that the tag sits inside the head section and before the closing tag, so that is exactly where it goes. Then leave it there permanently : the note under the field reads, don't remove the meta tag even after verification succeeds. If you can't edit the page, XML File puts a file at your web root instead. Don't sit on DNS verification. If the automatic route doesn't confirm right away, Bing tells you it has not received instant confirmation from your DNS provider and that the check may take hours. Switch to the meta tag and finish today rather than watching a pending screen. Verification is the gate on everything below it, so getting past it by any method is the only thing that matters here. Submit the sitemap, then leave it for two days Open Sitemaps, click Submit sitemap, and paste the full URL. The field's own example is https://www.example.com/sitemap.xml, and the accepted formats printed under it are XML, RSS 2.0, mRSS (Media RSS), Atom 0.3 & 1.0 and text files . If you came in through the Search Console import, your sitemaps arrived with you and this step is already done. Then stop refreshing it. A new account is told its data and reports are being processed and that it may take up to 48 hours to reflect, and nothing you click shortens that window. Put a reminder two days out and go do the next step, which is the one that does the real work. Turn on IndexNow, the step that actually pays On Cloudflare this is a single toggle, and it's the highest-value thing on this page. In the Cloudflare dashboard, open your site's Caching section, go to the Configuration page, and enable Crawler Hints . Cloudflare's documentation confirms Crawler Hints supports IndexNow and lists it as available on Free, Pro, Business and Enterprise . Bing's own IndexNow card says it back: Cloudflare users, simply turn on Crawler Hints and your site will start submitting to IndexNow. Two things switch it off silently. Cloudflare decides content changed from a cache MISS, so a hostname that isn't proxied through Cloudflare emits nothing at all , and Cloudflare won't report any asset whose response status is above 4xx. If the toggle is on and Bing shows no IndexNow activity, check the proxy status of that hostname before you check anything else . Not on Cloudflare? Implement the protocol directly. The IndexNow documentation wants a key of 8 to 128 hexadecimal characters. The spec also spells out the allowed set as lowercase a-z, uppercase A-Z, numbers and dashes, so generate a hex string and don't hand-write one . Publish it as a UTF-8 text file named for the key itself at your site root and containing that key. Then it's a GET for one URL, or a POST with a JSON body carrying up to 10,000 URLs per post . 403 means the key isn't valid: either the key file isn't being served, or it is being served and doesn't contain that key. 422 means the URLs don't belong to the host, or the key doesn't match the schema. 429 means back off. One submission reaches every participating engine, and Google is not one of them. IndexNow's published participant list is Bing, Yandex, Seznam, Naver, Yep, the Internet Archive and AmazonBot, and the protocol commits those engines to share submitted URLs with each other. Anyone selling you IndexNow as a way into Google faster is selling something it does not do. Use Submit URLs only when something is urgent URL Submission is for a page you need crawled today , not for feeding Bing your site. Paste one URL per line, and the tool caps you: You can submit at most 500 URLs at a time. Your daily allowance is per site and displayed live on the page as Quota left for today (URL Submission Only) . Read the number there. Bing templates it rather than publishing a figure, so any fixed daily quota you've seen in a blog post is somebody's guess . The rejection that catches people is a host mismatch. Bing answers, URL is not related to your verified domain. Please verify URL before submitting. Your bare domain and your www version are separate properties here , and so are http and https. Verify the exact host your pages serve from, check what your sitemap actually lists, and if you serve on both, verify both. Doing this across several sites? Get a key instead of clicking. Click Settings at the top right, open API Access , accept the terms, then click Generate API Key . Microsoft issues one key per user rather than per site , so the same key covers every property you've verified, and it tells you not to hand that key to anyone you don't trust. Read AI Performance monthly, and buy nothing else AI Performance is the report worth opening. Bing ships an AI Search Queries Report and an AI Pages view, and its Citations metric is defined in the tool as total citations from your site that are displayed as sources in AI-generated answers for the selected date range. Read it monthly, don't tune for it , because there's no control anywhere in the tool that moves that number. What moves it sits on the page, which is its own free guide . If pages stay out of the index, the sitemap coverage report sorts your problem into one of two kinds. Disallowed in robots.txt , No-index tag , Canonical URL exists , Redirect URLs , Dead links (404 - 410) and Cannot crawl the content (403, 5xx) are things you go and fix today. Discovered but not in index and Crawled but not in index are not: Bing's only advice for those is to consult its Webmaster Guidelines and improve the content quality. Resubmitting a page in either of those two buckets changes nothing , because the page is being judged rather than blocked. Now stop, because you're finished. Nothing Microsoft publishes asks for Bing-specific content, Bing-specific keywords or Bing-specific markup, and its own remedy for an unindexed page points straight back at general page quality. Every step above is one-time work , so a monthly line item called Bing SEO is billing you for a report you can open yourself in ten seconds. If the pages need to be better, that's just SEO , and it counts on both engines at once. On this page Check the number before you spend anything Add the site by importing it from Search Console If the import fails, verify with the meta tag Submit the sitemap, then leave it for two days Turn on IndexNow, the step that actually pays Use Submit URLs only when something is urgent Read AI Performance monthly, and buy nothing else Written by Drew Chapin → Updated 2026-09-08 Rather not do this yourself? SEO and AI Optimization → Related guides Schema markup, and what it actually buys you → Bing was the easy part Do the twenty minutes yourself today , because there's nothing in it worth paying anyone for. The hard part is the one Bing's own guidelines point back at: pages good enough that a search engine indexes them and an AI answer cites them. That's the work our SEO and AI Optimization service does, the writing, the markup and the technical fixes, on the pages that decide whether anyone finds you. Have us do it. Everything above, filed for you, chased for you, and reported back. One flat fee. See the service → Every guide we publish is free and ungated. Browse all of them , see what we do and what it costs , or read why we built this company . Written by Drew Chapin , who ran all of this on his own name first. © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## Your podcast needs a web address, not a website
URL: https://discoverability.co/guides/does-your-podcast-need-its-own-website/

Home / Guides / Making a podcast findable: the free afternoon, then the catalog Podcasts Your podcast needs a web address, not a website No. Apple and Spotify will carry your show without a website you own. What they need is a working web address inside one tag in your RSS feed, and a page your host publishes satisfies that as completely as a domain you paid for. So the platform question is settled. Open your feed, check the tag, and decide about a real site on search alone, because search is the only thing it buys you. What you get: no extra distribution A website you own adds nothing at Apple or Spotify. Apple's bar to submit is an Apple Podcasts Connect account, required tags, at least one episode and artwork. Spotify says shows hosted with Spotify for Creators are published to listeners automatically. Whatever page your host already put in the feed clears both stores. What a real site buys is web search, and only web search. What it costs: writing, not money The version that satisfies the platforms costs you nothing, because your host already built it. A site that earns anything is different work: real pages you write and keep current, on a domain you pay for. There's no ID to send, no fee, no application and nobody to submit it to. The cost is that it doesn't end , and pages nobody maintains stop being worth having. What stops it: the wrong URL in one tag Put your feed's own XML address into the show's link tag and you've broken the one thing that was actually required. Spotify's spec calls that field the web address of the podcast RSS page, which reads like the feed and isn't: the example printed beside it is an ordinary web page. RSS 2.0 , the spec Apple links to, defines link as the URL to the HTML website corresponding to the channel. Send a page a person can read. Read the link tag in your own feed Get your feed address first. Hosted with Spotify for Creators, it's under Settings, then Availability, in the section headed RSS Distribution, and Spotify notes you won't see that section until you've published your first episode. On any other host, Spotify's own instruction is the right one: contact them and ask for it. Open the feed address in a browser and search the page for the word link. The one that counts is the plain <link> element at the channel level, above your episodes. If you hit an <atom:link rel="self"> first, skip it: that tag is supposed to hold your feed's own XML address, and it is not the one being checked here. Then open the address inside it. If it loads a page a human can read, whether that's your own site or the landing page your host publishes, you're already compliant and there is nothing to do here today . If it loads raw XML, a parked domain, or nothing, that's the one thing on this page worth fixing now. Fix it in your host's show settings rather than by editing the feed by hand, because a hosted feed is generated from your show settings, so the settings field is the thing that actually controls the tag. If you can't find the field, ask the host, which is the same answer Apple gives: your hosting provider should be able to help you address technical requirements. Run the feed through the validators Apple names Apple names two outside tools on its own validation page, and both take a feed address and nothing else. Cast Feed Validator puts a single box on its front page. The box at Podbase Podcast Validator reads Enter podcast RSS feed URL. Paste, run it, and read the warnings yourself before Apple reads them for you. A clean report is not an approval, and Apple says so in two sentences on the validation page : passing validation doesn't necessarily mean your podcast will be approved. All content must comply with our content guidelines. Validation there is strictly a technical evaluation. A show can pass every check on this page and still be turned down on content. Ship both required lists, because they don't match Apple's validator names what it rejects on, in its own error text. Your feed must contain a title. There is no description tag in your feed, or the description tag is empty. There is no language tag in your feed, or the language tag is empty, and it wants a supported ISO value. There is no explicit tag in your feed, or the explicit tag is empty, and it wants true or false. There is no category tag in your feed, or the category tag is empty. That's five tags at the show level, and Apple's list never mentions the link tag at all . Spotify's list is shorter, different, and the link tag is on it. Its delivery specification marks title, link, description and itunes:author as exactly one each, so all four are mandatory there, while language and itunes:explicit are marked optional, which is the reverse of Apple. Spotify writes that categories aren't mandatory for ingest, though it uses them for recommendations. Every episode needs a guid and a pubDate, one each. The document is reachable through Spotify's podcast specification doc page. Ship the union and stop thinking about it: title, link, description, language, explicit, author and category at the show level, then a unique enclosure and a permanent globally unique identifier on every episode, both of which Apple requires by name . One trap is left. Apple's categories are case-sensitive, so Kids & Family passes and Kids & family fails on that one letter, and an ampersand inside a category name has to be escaped rather than typed raw. Look at the show yourself before you submit Apple lets you load the feed into the Podcasts app before anyone reviews it. On iOS: open Podcasts, tap Library, tap Edit in the upper right corner, then tap Add a Show by URL, enter your feed address and tap Follow. On macOS: open Podcasts, select File, then Add a Show by URL, enter the address and select Follow. This publishes nothing. Apple's own wording is that adding a show by URL doesn't publish it to the Apple Podcasts directory. If the artwork appears and an episode streams, the feed is working and you can go and submit it. That's the last check worth running, and it costs you nothing. Now decide about the site, on search alone Nothing you add to a website changes your standing with either store. Apple's submission bar is an account, required tags, at least one episode and artwork, and a site is not on that list. Spotify publishes Spotify for Creators shows automatically. Every page you write past that point is for the open web , and the open web is the only place it can pay you back. Your episode page competes as an ordinary web page, on ordinary merits. There's no format bonus for being a podcast, no podcast box in the results to win, and the listening apps run their own internal search that a website never touches. The two honest reasons to build are that you want the show findable outside the two apps, and that you want a page you can edit instead of a directory listing you can't. If the thin page exists only to fill the link tag, leave it thin. The spec is indifferent to what loads there, neither platform documents a check on it, and pages nobody maintains earn nothing. Build when you're ready to publish something and keep publishing it. Until then, put the money into the show. Don't pay anyone for podcast schema The rich result that markup was sold on no longer exists. Google's developer page for podcast structured data now returns a 404, and Podcast doesn't appear in the current gallery of supported types , which runs from Article and Event through Product, Review snippet and Video. There is no podcast-specific result left to earn , so there's nothing to buy. Any quote or article telling you to add Podcast markup so Google shows your episodes was written before that change. Google Podcasts as a destination is gone as well, so there's no podcast surface for a website to feed. Ordinary markup describing your organization and your pages still does its job. It's the podcast-specific type that stopped paying, and you should not be charged for it . If you move the feed or the address later Changing a feed address the wrong way loses your subscribers, and Apple documents the way that doesn't. Set the old feed's server to return an HTTP 301, put the new address in the itunes:new-feed-url tag inside the new feed, and per Apple's instructions keep both in place for at least four weeks. Ask your host whether they set the redirect for you before anyone touches a server; Apple's own line is that your hosting provider should be able to help you address technical requirements. Don't let the episode identifiers change while you do it. Apple warns that altering a GUID can show listeners duplicate episodes, misrepresent your analytics, and ultimately affect your show's status on Apple Podcasts. Spotify's side of the same job is its Updating an RSS feed link or hosting provider article. If Spotify shows you a missing elements error while you're uploading or claiming the show, its instruction is to contact your hosting platform and have them fill in what's absent. There's no appeal and no form to file. Go back up to the two lists, work out which tag is empty, and hand your host the name of it. On this page Read the link tag in your own feed Run the feed through the validators Apple names Ship both required lists, because they don't match Look at the show yourself before you submit Now decide about the site, on search alone Don't pay anyone for podcast schema If you move the feed or the address later Written by Drew Chapin → Updated 2026-09-08 Rather not do this yourself? Podcast Growth → Related guides Schema markup, and what it actually buys you → The feed is the easy part. The catalog isn't. Checking the link tag is free and you should do it today. What it won't do is make your back catalog findable by the people searching for the guest, the topic, or the exact question you spent an hour answering. That's Podcast Growth : a real page and a full transcript for every episode, plus the written content around them. Send us the feed, we'll show you what's already being searched for inside it, and we'll quote the work from there. Have us do it. Everything above, filed for you, chased for you, and reported back. One flat fee. See the service → Every guide we publish is free and ungated. Browse all of them , see what we do and what it costs , or read why we built this company . Written by Drew Chapin , who ran all of this on his own name first. © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## How to get a Wikipedia page for your company: the sources decide, not the draft
URL: https://discoverability.co/guides/get-a-wikipedia-page-for-your-company/

Home / Guides Wikipedia How to get a Wikipedia page for your company: the sources decide, not the draft There's nothing to apply for and nothing to buy. A Wikipedia article about your company gets written as a draft by somebody who discloses who's paying them, then it waits in a volunteer queue. What decides the outcome is the coverage that already exists about you, judged one source at a time . So test the sources before you write a word, because a draft that fails that test can't be saved by better writing. What you actually get A draft in a volunteer review queue, and an answer that turns on sources you already have or don't. If it's accepted, you get an article you don't control. Wikipedia's conflict of interest guideline is blunt about it: once an article exists about your company, you have no right to control its content, or to delete it outside the normal channels. Anyone can then add anything the public record supports. What it costs you Wikipedia charges nothing and sells nothing. What you hand over is a public disclosure: anyone paid to work on it, your own marketing staff included, has to publicly name their employer, their client and their affiliation, in at least one of three places: their user page, the talk page of the contribution, or the edit summary . There's no confidentiality for it and an NDA doesn't excuse it. Then the wait, which Wikipedia puts no number on: 'Getting a review can take a while, but your draft will be reviewed eventually.' What stops it working The press file you're proudest of. Funding rounds, launches, acquisitions, new hires, best-of lists and founder interviews are all named in the guideline as coverage that doesn't count toward notability, and so is anything substantially based on your press release even when an independent outlet published it. Each source is judged alone against four tests , so three half-qualifying articles never add up to one that qualifies. Score every source before you write a word Open a spreadsheet and give every article ever written about the company its own row. Score each one against the four criteria in Wikipedia's notability guideline for organizations and companies : significant coverage addressing the company directly and in depth, completely independent of the company, reliable, and secondary. A source has to pass all four on its own. Fail one and it contributes nothing, however good the outlet is. This is the rule companies get wrong. Sources are evaluated separately and independently of each other, so coverage doesn't add up , and three articles that each half qualify are worth nothing together. The guideline also wants more than one survivor: a single significant independent source is almost never sufficient, multiple is not a set number, and it says outright that a tech start-up in a major US metro area is held to a higher standard than an organization from a place and a decade nobody wrote much about. Then one filter on whatever survived. At least one source has to reach past your own city. The guideline requires at least one regional, statewide, provincial, national or international source, and says attention solely from local media, its example being the weekly newspaper for a small town, is not an indication of notability. If nothing clears all of this, stop here. Nothing later in this procedure fixes a source list. Cross off the coverage that counts for zero The guideline lists what it treats as trivial, and it's most of a modern press file. Routine announcements don't count : raised capital, expansions, acquisitions and mergers, a sale or a closure, hiring and promotions and departures, a product launch or discontinuation, a branch opening, quarterly results, appearances at trade fairs. A funding round written up at length in a national title is still a routine announcement. Only unpaid sources count , in the guideline's own bold type. Any paid or sponsored article or post is out, and so is any material substantially based on a press release even when an independent outlet published it. Non-staff contributor pieces are named too, at publications that accept public contributions without meaningful editorial oversight, with Forbes, Huffington Post, Entrepreneur.com, Inc.com and TechCrunch given as the examples. Your executives quoted as story sources are a passing mention , not coverage of the company. Also out: best-of, top 100 and fastest-growing lists, non-notable awards, listings of your offices, employees, products or patents, and patents themselves whether pending or granted. Watch the near miss too. A profile of your founder is coverage of your founder , not of the company, unless it devotes significant attention to the company itself. Disclose before you make a single edit Register an account in a person's name, not the company's. Wikipedia's conflict of interest guideline says not to create a shared organizational account or to use an organization's name as the account name. The account is yours, not your employer's , and a shared login is one of the fastest ways to get blocked before you have written anything. If anyone is being paid, disclosure is mandatory, and it comes from the Wikimedia Foundation's terms of use rather than from etiquette. Put {{paid|employer=name of employer|client=name of client}} on your user page and {{connected contributor (paid)}} on the draft's talk page, as the paid-contribution disclosure policy sets out. Editors who fail to disclose paid contributions are prohibited from editing. There's no confidentiality for the employer, the client or the affiliation, and a non-disclosure agreement doesn't invalidate the requirement. The definition is wider than a contract with an agency. Anyone compensated for any publicity effort connected to the subject counts as a paid editor whether or not they were paid specifically to edit Wikipedia , and interns count as employees. If you own the company, disclose anyway: the policy deems anyone compensated for any publicity effort connected to the subject a paid editor, it carves out no exception for owners, and over-disclosing costs you nothing. You do have a conflict of interest, and the Articles for creation process states it must be used by editors with one. Write it as a draft, never straight into the encyclopedia On the Articles for creation page the button reads Click here to start a new article , and it opens the Wikipedia Article Wizard . Its first screen is headed Welcome and offers Practice in the community sandbox or Practice in your personal sandbox before Next; the final screen is headed You're all ready to go! and its button reads Create new article draft. Your title carries Draft: in front of it until it's accepted , and drafts aren't indexed by Google or most other search engines, so nothing surfaces on your name while you work. Write it from the sources that survived the test and from nothing else. AfC's own instructions: articles should reflect only what reliable sources have said about the topic, don't add categories to a draft because a reviewer adds those on acceptance, don't copy or closely paraphrase your sources, and articles that are generated entirely by LLMs will be rejected . Reviewers screen for that now. Do not create the page directly in the encyclopedia to save the wait. Conflicted and paid editors are strongly discouraged from editing affected articles directly and are told to put new articles through Articles for creation instead. Bypassing the review by moving the page or pasting it into mainspace can get it moved back to draft, speedily deleted or listed for deletion, and AfC warns that repeated attempts may lead to consequences for the account. Submit it, then watch the queue instead of your inbox Click Submit for review on the draft. If that button isn't there, switch to the source editor and add {{subst:submit}} to the top of the page. Then confirm it landed: a yellow box reading Review waiting, please be patient means you're in the queue. No yellow box means nothing was submitted, and the place to ask is the Articles for creation help desk . There's no service level and nobody writes to you while you wait. Wikipedia says only that getting a review can take a while but your draft will be reviewed eventually, and the wizard's last screen says only that reviews can take a long time and your draft will be reviewed in due course, while the pending banner on your own draft carries a live estimate in the form 'This may take [n] weeks or more, since drafts are reviewed in no specific order' - the figure moves with the backlog, so read it off your own banner and never off a number quoted anywhere else . The queue is public: the pending submissions category shows a live count and one bucket per day of waiting, so read that rather than anyone's promise about timing. Put two dates in the calendar. A draft nobody has edited for six months gets deleted under speedy deletion criterion G13, so touch it before then, and know that a G13 deletion can be undone on request. Second, ignore anyone who contacts you offering to get your draft published. Wikipedia carries a standing scam warning on that final wizard screen: Real Wikipedia editors will never contact or solicit you for payment or compensation of any kind. Read which word the reviewer used Declined and rejected are different outcomes, and only one of them is over. A declined draft keeps its submit button, and Wikipedia encourages you to take the reviewer's feedback and resubmit. A rejected draft has no submit button, because reviewers reject only when it's unlikely the draft will ever meet the guidelines, for example when the topic isn't relevant to an encyclopedia or the draft is spam. Don't resubmit a rejection. On a decline, fix the source list, not the prose . Rewriting the same article around the same citations gets the same answer, because the decision was made source by source. Replace the references with ones that each pass all four tests alone, then resubmit with the button or {{subst:submit}}. Resubmitting without materially changing the sourcing burns volunteer time and eventually gets the account treated as a problem. If the reasoning doesn't make sense to you, ask at the help desk or the Teahouse , where volunteers answer newcomer questions. Those two pages are the whole appeal. If an article gets created and is later deleted, the venue is deletion review , and the argument there has to be that the process was misapplied, not that your company deserves a page. If the sources aren't there yet Wikidata is a separate project with a far lower bar , and it's the one worth knowing about. Its notability policy accepts an item that refers to a clearly identifiable entity which can be described using serious and publicly available references. That's the structured record search engines and AI assistants read when they work out who you are. It is not a Wikipedia article , and nobody should sell it to you as one. A sourced mention inside an article that already exists is a much lower bar than a page of your own. An industry article, a parent company, an acquisition. You still don't edit it yourself: put the proposed sentence and its source on that article's talk page using the {{edit COI}} template and let an uninvolved editor act on it. Same route for a correction to an article about you that's already live. Then the part nobody selling this says out loud. An article isn't reputation control, and it can cut against you. The conflict of interest guideline puts it this way: if there's anything publicly available on a topic that you would not want included in an article, it will probably find its way there eventually. If your company has a lawsuit, a layoff round or a bad quarter in the public record, a successful article is a permanent, editable page collecting all of it , and you can't take it down. On this page Score every source before you write a word Cross off the coverage that counts for zero Disclose before you make a single edit Write it as a draft, never straight into the encyclopedia Submit it, then watch the queue instead of your inbox Read which word the reviewer used If the sources aren't there yet Written by Drew Chapin → Updated 2026-09-08 Rather not do this yourself? Wikipedia Page Creation → Related guides Schema markup, and what it actually buys you → Find out whether you qualify before you write anything Scoring your own sources is free and it's an afternoon's work, so run the test above today. When you'd rather have the answer in writing, our Wikipedia Page Creation and Citations service is $5,000 for a company and $3,500 for a person, and it opens with a written notability assessment listing every source and what it's worth. If the research says you don't qualify, the fee is refunded. Have us do it. Everything above, filed for you, chased for you, and reported back. One flat fee. See the service → Every guide we publish is free and ungated. Browse all of them , see what we do and what it costs , or read why we built this company . Written by Drew Chapin , who ran all of this on his own name first. © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## How to use Google's removal tools on a court record
URL: https://discoverability.co/guides/how-google-removal-tools-actually-work/

Home / Guides / Court record removal: what actually comes down Guide How to use Google's removal tools on a court record Google's removal forms pull a URL out of search results, and none of them deletes the page. There's no category for an accurate court record , so what moves one is a site that charges to take it down, the personal information printed on the page, or a court order naming the URL. Work them in that order. Refresh Outdated Content does nothing until the site itself takes the page down or edits it. What you get: de-indexed, never deleted A granted request comes back as one of two scopes : the URL won't appear for any search query, or it won't appear for queries that contain your name. Google's own words: "even when we remove content from Google Search, it may still exist on the web, and only a website owner can remove content entirely." What you send: one exact URL per line Google removes only the URLs you submit , so a domain name or a homepage link buys you nothing. Every line has to be the exact page address starting with http:// or https://, one per line, up to 1,000 lines. Send screenshots of each page with it, an affirmation that you're the subject or authorized by them, your name, an email address, and your country. What stops it: the public-record carve-out Google's PII announcement says it evaluates whether the content "appears as part of the public record on the sites of government or official sources," and in those cases, "we won't make removals." Don't spend a filing on a county clerk's docket, a sheriff's booking page or a state court portal. Work the private copies instead. Start by collecting every URL and screenshotting it Search your full name in quotes, then your case caption, then your name plus the county, and go several result pages deep on each. Every page carrying your case is a separate line on the form and gets judged separately , so a copy you didn't find is a copy Google didn't remove. Copy the exact address out of the browser bar for each one, not the search result link. Screenshot each page while it's still up, with the URL and the date in the shot. If the site demands money to take the page down, screenshot that demand first , because paying it makes the page vanish along with the only proof Google will accept. You can crop each shot to show only your face, which is what Google's exploitative-sites guidance tells you to do. If the site charges to take it down, file under exploitative removal practices File this one through the personal content removal form , under the exploitative removal practices category. All three conditions have to hold : you're a subject of the content in the URL you submit, the website isn't a business review site, and "the website requires payment to the site or other agencies to have the content removed." A fee routed through a third-party reputation service still counts. Attach the fee screenshots and write the extra note Google asks for on how the website is exploitative : name the amount demanded, where on the site it's demanded, and what happens if you don't pay. Put every URL on that operator's network into the same submission. Point the form at the personal information, not at the case The category list is closed : images of minors, child sexual abuse material, personally identifiable info and doxxing content, personal sexual content, and content on sites with exploitative removal practices. There's no category for an accurate arrest record, mugshot, docket or lawsuit , so file on the personal information printed on the page. The covered list is literal : your address, phone number or email, Social Security or tax ID numbers, bank and credit card numbers, "pictures of your signature or ID," private records like medical records, and confidential usernames and passwords. Doxxing needs a threat attached , or "a significant amount of aggregated personal info without a legitimate purpose." Quote the exact line on the page that carries one of those in the notes field. Register your details in Results about you and read every denial Results about you is the self-serve version, and it watches for your phone number, home address, email address, Social Security number, passport number and driver's license number. Register those, then check the queue: requests move through In progress, Approved, Denied or Undone , and a denial arrives by email with a stated reason. Read that reason. It names the route to try next. Two limits to plan around. Google won't pull results carrying your contact info from pages "owned by Educational or government institutions" or from "Newspapers," so don't file those here. And the monitor only fires on the contact details you registered, so put a monthly reminder in your calendar and re-run the name search yourself. If you hold a court order, file the legal removal Report it for legal reasons when a court decision has determined the content is unlawful, or under copyright, trademark or local law. Google's stated position: "determining whether content is illegal is not always a determination that Google is equipped to make, especially without notice from those who are affected." Submit the decision itself, the specific URLs rather than a homepage, and which section of the order compels removal of each URL. An attorney demand letter isn't a mechanism here. Know the price before you file. Google republishes the notice : "when legally able, we may send a copy of each legal notice we receive to the Lumen project for publication." Your contact information is withheld. The URLs and the claim are not. And the right to be forgotten covers the EU, Turkey, Serbia and Quebec, so a US resident has no route there. File Refresh Outdated Content only after the page is down This one is for people who don't own the page , and it fires only where the page "no longer exists or is significantly different." It "will not remove a page or image that still exists and has not changed." Submit a live page and you get a "Content still on page" denial telling you to contact the webmaster and resubmit afterward. Run it the day after the site takes the page down or edits it, and not before. Statuses are Pending, Approved, Denied, Expired and Cancelled. Pending runs a few days, and an approved refresh goes Expired after 180 days. A verified site owner can cancel your request, so check the status back rather than assuming it held. Skip Search Console's Removals tool entirely: it only works on a property you've verified ownership of. What's still standing after Google says yes The page stays live. Bing and DuckDuckGo keep serving it, anyone holding the direct link still opens it, and Search Console's own page says removal doesn't affect other search engines. Removing a Google result also doesn't seal or expunge the court's own record , and a court order does nothing at Google until you file it on the legal removal form yourself. Re-run the whole search next month, and the month after that. The cost of doing this yourself is the searching, a screenshot of every copy, one URL per line, four tools' worth of statuses to track, and the same search again when a copy comes back under a new brand. On this page Start by collecting every URL and screenshotting it If the site charges to take it down, file under exploitative removal practices Point the form at the personal information, not at the case Register your details in Results about you and read every denial If you hold a court order, file the legal removal File Refresh Outdated Content only after the page is down What's still standing after Google says yes Written by Drew Chapin → Updated 2026-09-08 Rather not do this yourself? Court Record Removal → Related guides How to remove court records from Google → How to remove arrest records from Google → The copies Google won't touch A removal granted on one URL leaves every syndicated copy where it was. Court Record Removal is $199, one time, and we file the removal requests, chase the syndicated copies, and build accurate pages for anything that stays. Have us do it. Everything above, filed for you, chased for you, and reported back. One flat fee. See the service → Every guide we publish is free and ungated. Browse all of them , see what we do and what it costs , or read why we built this company . Written by Drew Chapin , who ran all of this on his own name first. © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## How to get a Wikipedia page created: the sources decide, not you
URL: https://discoverability.co/guides/how-to-get-a-wikipedia-page-created/

Home / Guides Wikipedia How to get a Wikipedia page created: the sources decide, not you One thing decides whether you get a Wikipedia article, and it isn't the writing. Independent sources have to have covered you already, in depth, without being paid - journalism in nearly every case, though for a person a major award or an entry in a national biographical dictionary can stand in. If they have, the route is free and it's called Articles for Creation. If they haven't, no wizard, no writer and no fee changes that answer. So check what's been written about you before you spend an hour on anything else, and disclose first if money's involved. What you actually get An article in the encyclopedia, if volunteer reviewers accept it. That's the whole outcome, and it isn't permanent. Acceptance means one reviewer judged that the article would probably survive a deletion discussion, so it can be nominated for deletion the week after it goes live. It isn't instant in Google either. A new article may be blocked from search-engine indexing until New Pages Patrol reviews it or it has existed for 90 days. What it costs you No fee, no government ID, no lawyer, no notarization. What's actually required is about three strong independent sources and a draft title. If anyone is being paid, though, the price is public. The Terms of Use make you name your employer, your client and your affiliation on the open web under your own account, before you edit anything. Time is the other cost: the wizard says a review may take 7 weeks or more. What stops it working The guideline excludes, by name, the coverage a PR budget buys. Press releases, anything substantially based on one even when a real outlet ran it, any paid or sponsored article, and pieces by non-staff contributors to Forbes, Huffington Post, Entrepreneur.com, Inc.com and TechCrunch. Funding rounds, hires, launches and results announcements are routine and don't count. Coverage you paid for can't become notability, wherever it ran. Check the sources first, because they are the whole decision Before you open anything, put the coverage in a list. You're looking for around three strong, distinct sources that are reliable, independent of you, and cover you in real depth, which is the rule of thumb Wikipedia's own reviewing instructions hand to reviewers. Three good ones beat dozens of passing mentions. For a company each source has to clear the bar on its own , so you can't assemble one qualifying source out of four partial ones. For a person the rule is looser: several thinner sources may be combined, as long as none of it is trivial coverage. Everything a PR budget buys is named and ruled out. The guideline for companies excludes press releases and press kits, anything substantially based on a press release even when an independent outlet published it, any paid or sponsored article, and by name, pieces by non-staff contributors to Forbes, Huffington Post, Entrepreneur.com, Inc.com and TechCrunch. Interviews mostly fail too, because the content came from you. Routine business events don't count : funding rounds, hires and departures, product launches, new locations, financial results, sponsorships, conference appearances. A company also needs at least one source with a regional, statewide, national or international audience , since attention only from a small-town weekly isn't an indication of notability. And one wire story reprinted in twenty papers is one source , not twenty. For a person the shape is the same : multiple published secondary sources, reliable, independent of you and of each other, or a well-known award, or an entry in a country's standard national biographical dictionary, per the guideline for people . Nothing is inherited, so a famous founder doesn't qualify the company and the company doesn't qualify the founder. If the list comes up empty, stop here. Wikipedia says it in those words : if your topic is not notable, stop here and find a new one. Asking a volunteer to write it instead isn't a way around this. Wikipedia:Requested articles opens by telling you it isn't an on-demand article writing service, that most requested articles will not be written, that its associated WikiProject is inactive, and that if you really want an article you should consider writing it yourself. Make the account, then disclose the money before you edit anything Register one account and use it for everything that follows. Creating a page directly in the encyclopedia is limited to autoconfirmed accounts, which means at least 10 edits and 4 days since your first edit . Don't spend those four days waiting if you're connected to the subject, because that direct route isn't open to you anyway. If you are the subject, work for the subject, or are being paid, you use Articles for Creation. The AfC page is flat about it: the process must also be used by editors with a conflict of interest. Reviewers are told what to watch for, and the listed warning signs include an author who refers to the subject as their client, company or employer. If money changes hands, the disclosure comes before the editing, not after the draft is written. The Wikimedia Foundation's Terms of Use require you to disclose each and any employer, client, intended beneficiary and affiliation, in at least one of three places: a statement on your user page, a statement on the talk page accompanying the paid contribution, or a statement in the edit summary. This one is contractual, so skipping it isn't a norms problem, it's a blocked account and a deleted draft. The wizard makes you do it and won't let you past. Its Paid Editing step ends on the line "You must complete these steps in order to continue." The steps are: edit your own user page, paste {{paid|employer=Name of your employer|client=Name of your client, if different from your employer}} , click the "Publish changes" button, then click "I have disclosed". On an article's talk page the template is {{connected contributor (paid)}} instead. Run the Article Wizard and create the draft Wikipedia:Article wizard is the route and it's four screens if you have no connection to the subject, six if you're paid or connected, because that branch adds a Paid Editing screen and a COI Editing screen before Draft Creation. The first is Welcome, offering "Practice in the community sandbox" or "Practice in your personal sandbox" before you go on. Click Next for "Referencing and notability", which tells you outright that your article will be declined if the topic is not notable, violates copyright, or is not referenced properly. Click Next again. "Common mistakes" is where you pick your own branch, and the three buttons are the real question : "I'm paid to edit or I'm writing about my employer", "I'm writing about myself, or a close person/subject", and "I'm not connected to the subject". Pick the true one. The first two route you through disclosure and conflict-of-interest steps; only the third goes straight to Draft Creation. On the Draft Creation screen the input reads "Enter the name of your draft here" and the button under it reads "Create new article draft" . Type the subject's name exactly as it should read as an article title. Wikipedia adds the "Draft:" prefix itself , so don't type it in. "Start over" is the only other button on that screen, and it does what it says. The draft is invisible to search engines from the moment it exists. The wizard states it plainly: when you create your draft, it will not be seen by external search engines. So there's no search benefit, no AI-citation benefit and nothing to show anybody while it sits there. A draft is work in progress, not a result. Write it so a reviewer can check every line Open with a sentence that says who or what the subject is in plain English, then attach a citation to every factual claim , inline, wrapped in a pair of ref tags. Reviewers look for at least three sources doing real work. Offline, paywalled and non-English sources are all fine, as long as somebody could go and check them. Do not have an AI write it. Wikipedia's first-article page says don't use large language models or generative AI, the reviewing instructions call using them to generate or rewrite article content prohibited, and there's a speedy-deletion criterion for AI-generated content. Reviewers are handed the tells: fabricated references, references that don't support the text, invented facts, confident statements nobody can verify. Cut every word you'd use in a pitch. The wizard names "leading expert" and "ground-breaking technology" as exactly the register that gets a draft killed. Don't copy-paste or closely paraphrase from your own website or anyone else's. Don't add categories either, since the AfC page asks you to leave those to the reviewer who accepts it. Don't burn a week on formatting. Reviewers are explicitly told not to decline a draft for citation formatting, bare URLs, general references, offline or paywalled or non-English sources, a missing infobox, missing images, missing categories, or a draft that's short or needs ordinary copy-editing. Spend that hour on the sources instead , because that's the only thing a decline will actually be about. Submit it, then look for the yellow box The submit button sits at the top of your own draft page. The AfC page calls it "Submit for review" and Your first article calls it "Submit the draft for review!", so scan for either. If there's no button, switch to the source editor and add {{subst:submit}} as the first line, or use the submission wizard , which needs JavaScript turned on. You are not submitted until a yellow box on your draft reads "Review waiting, please be patient." That box is the confirmation and there is no other one. If it isn't there, nothing is in the queue and nobody is coming, and the place to ask is the Articles for creation help desk . Budget seven weeks or more. That's the wizard's own number: reviews can take a long time, and this may take 7 weeks or more, since drafts are reviewed in no specific order. The reviewing instructions put it a second way, that there's no fixed waiting time and it isn't a first-come, first-served queue. So no date exists, and anybody selling you one is selling you a date they invented. Keep improving the draft while it waits. That's allowed and encouraged. What you must not do is move it into the encyclopedia yourself or paste it into a new page: the AfC page warns that bypassing the process can get the page moved back to draft, speedily deleted or listed for deletion, and that repeated attempts carry consequences. Declined is fixable. Rejected is the end of that draft. A decline names a problem and invites you back. The reviewer picks up to two standard reasons and codes them: nn for general notability, bio for people, corp for companies, prof for academics, and a long list beyond that. Read what the notice actually names, fix that, and resubmit with the same button. There's no waiting period before you resubmit. If a decline cites only formatting, a missing infobox or a paywalled source, that's a decline the instructions tell reviewers not to make , and you can raise it at the help desk or ask the reviewer to explain. What doesn't work is resubmitting the same draft unchanged until a different reviewer sees it. The instructions call that disruptive, and it eventually costs you the draft. A rejection is a different word and it means stop. Reviewers are told to reject only when the subject or content is fundamentally unsuitable with no reasonable prospect that further work makes it acceptable. It doesn't bar an article forever, but what reopens it is new coverage appearing , not a rewrite. Go back to the rejecting reviewer only when you actually have new sources. An abandoned draft disappears after six months with no human edit, deleted under criterion G13 , and nothing warns you first. Put the date in your calendar now. If it's already gone, it can normally be restored on request at Requests for undeletion , and the instructions treat that as housekeeping rather than a verdict on the subject. What an accepted article doesn't get you Acceptance means one volunteer answered one question: if this article were nominated for deletion, would it be likely to survive? That's a prediction, not protection. The article can be nominated the following week and deleted, and thin promotional company articles regularly are. Nothing about publication is permanent , and no service on earth can make it so. It may not be in Google on day one. New articles may be kept out of search-engine indexing until New Pages Patrol reviews them or they've existed for 90 days, and after that Wikipedia doesn't control indexing at all. Creating the article directly yourself gets you indexed no sooner: that route runs into the same rule. The day it publishes, it stops being yours. Anyone can edit it, nobody has to ask you, and you can't lock it. Corrections go through the article's talk page with your connection disclosed, which is slower than editing it yourself and is the only version that doesn't get you blocked. Nobody can sell you an acceptance, and anyone who says otherwise is lying to you. Wikipedia's scam warning names the exact pitches: writing and publishing an article for you, getting a draft accepted quickly, preventing or reversing a deletion, protecting an article from changes. If somebody contacted you first , by email, LinkedIn or WhatsApp, stop replying and forward the whole conversation to paid-en-wp@wikipedia.org. Paid work is permitted when it's disclosed. A guarantee never is. On this page Check the sources first, because they are the whole decision Make the account, then disclose the money before you edit anything Run the Article Wizard and create the draft Write it so a reviewer can check every line Submit it, then look for the yellow box Declined is fixable. Rejected is the end of that draft. What an accepted article doesn't get you Written by Drew Chapin → Updated 2026-09-08 Rather not do this yourself? Wikipedia Page Creation → Related guides Schema markup, and what it actually buys you → When the coverage is there and the process isn't your job Do the source check today, on your own, because it's free and it's the only step that decides anything. If the coverage clears the bar and you'd rather hand the rest over, our Wikipedia Page Creation and Citations service is $3,500 for an individual: we research the coverage first , write the draft against those sources, disclose our involvement the way the Terms of Use require, and answer the reviewers ourselves. Volunteer reviewers still decide, and no service changes that. Have us do it. Everything above, filed for you, chased for you, and reported back. One flat fee. See the service → Every guide we publish is free and ungated. Browse all of them , see what we do and what it costs , or read why we built this company . Written by Drew Chapin , who ran all of this on his own name first. © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## Perplexity citations, and what you can actually get changed
URL: https://discoverability.co/guides/how-to-get-cited-by-perplexity-ai/

Home / Guides / Search and AI visibility: what you actually control Search and AI Perplexity citations, and what you can actually get changed Perplexity publishes no way to remove a citation, suppress a URL, or delete a claim from an answer. Any guide describing one is inventing it. What exists is an answer error report, a privacy form scoped to your own account data, crawler control on a site you own, and a DMCA notice if you own the copyright. Start by capturing the answer, because the citation you need changed is a live web page. What you actually get A corrected source, not a takedown from the platform. Perplexity documents an answer error report and a data privacy form, and neither one promises to remove a cited page or a claim about you. The report carries no published response time at all. The privacy form promises a response within one month of receipt, extendable by up to two more. What changes an answer is the cited page itself getting corrected, delisted, or removed at the publisher. What you have to hand over For the answer report, two things: the URL to the query, and a description of the error and expected result. No ID, no fee, no account. The privacy form is a different matter. It presumes you hold a Perplexity account, the Privacy Notice says they'll require you to prove your identity, and filing for somebody else may require proof of identity or a power of attorney . Have one signed before you open the form. What stops it working The privacy form is scoped to your account data, not to what Perplexity says about you. Its IMPORTANT screen states that Perplexity may decline to remove information about financial scams, professional malpractice, criminal convictions, or the public conduct of government officials. If that's the situation, the form is a stated dead end, and Right to erasure only deletes your account. Capture the answer before you do anything else Run the query that produces the bad answer, copy the thread URL out of the address bar, and screenshot the whole answer. Perplexity threads are per session, so a re-run makes a new thread ID and can come back with different text. Close the tab without that URL and the report you file later has nothing to point at. Then open the Sources list on that answer and copy every URL in it. That list is the actual work. Perplexity cites live web pages, so each entry is a page sitting on somebody's website, with a publisher who can change it. Report the answer, then email support Perplexity's help article How can I report incorrect or inaccurate answers? tells you to use the flag icon below the answer. There's no flag icon. We read the toolbar off a live answer on September 8, 2026: it's Copy, Share and Fork on one side, then Helpful, Not helpful and More actions , the three-dot button, on the other. Mark it Not helpful and open the three-dot menu. Then email support@perplexity.ai, and treat the email as the real filing , because it's the one version of this that leaves you a record. The article names the only two things a report has to carry: URL to the query , and description of the error and expected result . Write what the answer says, write what it should say instead, and stop there. Use their words for the problem. The issue types the article lists include Misinformation and Outdated information , and a false claim about a person is the first one. Put the request type in the subject line , because Perplexity publishes no legal, privacy or DMCA address of its own: answer errors, DMCA notices and privacy appeals all land in that same support inbox. No response time is published for this anywhere. Fix the page Perplexity is citing This is the step that moves an answer. Take the source list from step one and work it the way you'd work any other bad page: get it corrected at the publisher, delisted, or removed. When the cited URL changes, the citation dies at the next crawl. Everything else here is a request you file and wait on. This is the part with a real success rate. If the page sits on a site you control, noindex it or block the crawler. Perplexity's crawler documentation names two user agents, PerplexityBot for search and linking and Perplexity-User for fetches a person triggers, and says it may take up to 24 hours for their systems to reflect a change. A block isn't a removal, and Perplexity's own two documents disagree about how well it even holds. The help center says PerplexityBot won't index the text of a site that disallows it, then adds that if a page is blocked, we may still index the domain, headline, and a brief factual summary . The developer documentation says Perplexity-User generally ignores robots.txt rules because a person asked for the fetch. Both are live. Expect a blocked page to still get named. Going the other way, a page you want cited has to stay readable. Perplexity recommends allowing PerplexityBot in robots.txt and permitting requests from its published IP ranges, listed at perplexity.com/perplexitybot.json and perplexity.com/perplexity-user.json . The firewall rule pairs the user agent with those ranges , and the documentation warns that firewall changes take their own time to propagate. File the Data Privacy Request only if it fits The form is at perplexity.typeform.com/datarequest , and it's the only form Perplexity's Privacy Notice names . Clear the cookie bar with Accept all or Reject all, press Start , then I understand, continue. on the screen headed IMPORTANT. It says four minutes. Question one is required: your relationship to Perplexity. The options are Customer/User of Perplexity AI, Employee, Job applicant, On Behalf of a Client , Other (please specify), and two options for people who got marketing or recruiting mail. Filing for somebody else means picking On Behalf of a Client, and that's the answer that can put a proof-of-identity or power of attorney requirement in play. Question two is required and it's the one to get right. Pick Restrict Processing of My Personal Data , which the form's own landing copy labels removal of content. Do not pick Erase my personal data. That copy says erasure deletes your account and all your data, and Perplexity's GDPR article confirms it can't reach specific threads, specific time periods, or anything short of deleting the whole account. Don't file this form for anything you can do yourself. Perplexity's GDPR article lists deleting threads, spaces, files and your account as self serve, and says that if a request comes in for any of those, refusing it is within their rights. On timing, the form promises a response within one month of receipt . Under GDPR they can extend that by up to two further months, and they have to tell you inside the first thirty days if they do. Set the date, then re-test the way a stranger would Put the one-month date in your calendar the day you file. Perplexity publishes no case number or status tracker for a filed request, and the answer report has no timeline at all, so that calendar entry is your entire follow-up system. Re-run the exact same prompt, logged out, across more than one session. Answers are generated fresh on every query, so one clean result proves nothing. If the old claim comes back on the second or third try, it isn't fixed, and a single good answer is not something to report to anybody as resolved. If they deny the request, the appeal needs one exact word. The Privacy Notice says to contact them with the subject line Appeal . Capitalized, in the subject line, or it's just another email into the support inbox. When none of that moves it Go back to the sources and go harder. Perplexity offers no further internal escalation for content about a person. Correcting, delisting or removing the cited page is the lever that works, and the second one is publishing better pages about the same person so there's something accurate for the model to read instead. In the EU or the UK there's an escalation the United States doesn't have. VeraSafe is Perplexity's appointed Article 27 representative and its data protection officer, reachable at experts@verasafe.com , and the Privacy Notice says that if you're not satisfied with the response, you may have a right to lodge a complaint with your local supervisory authority. If you own the copyright in the material, the DMCA turns a request into an obligation. That policy lives in section 6.5 of Perplexity's terms of service , not at the DMCA link in their own footer, which returns Page Not Found. It requires all six listed elements, including a statement of accuracy under penalty of perjury and a signature , sent to support@perplexity.ai or to 2261 Market Street, Ste. 14441, San Francisco, CA 94114. It reaches copyright and nothing else. What this does not do None of it obliges Perplexity to remove a true statement about you. Their terms say the service may generate output containing incorrect, biased, or incomplete information, so inaccurate output is written into the contract as an expected characteristic rather than a defect. Removal here is discretionary, every time. And getting something out of Perplexity changes nothing at the publisher. The page you never got corrected is still sitting on the web being read, which is why that source list from step one is the thing worth your afternoon. On this page Capture the answer before you do anything else Report the answer, then email support Fix the page Perplexity is citing File the Data Privacy Request only if it fits Set the date, then re-test the way a stranger would When none of that moves it What this does not do Written by Drew Chapin → Updated 2026-09-08 Rather not do this yourself? SEO and AI Optimization → Related guides Schema markup, and what it actually buys you → How to appear in AI search results: there's nothing to submit → The answer follows the sources. Send the report and file the form yourself. Both are free and both take one sitting. When the fix is a stack of pages that need correcting, delisting, or writing from scratch so a model has something accurate to read, that's our SEO and AI Optimization service, and we quote it against the sources actually carrying the claim. Have us do it. Everything above, filed for you, chased for you, and reported back. One flat fee. See the service → Every guide we publish is free and ungated. Browse all of them , see what we do and what it costs , or read why we built this company . Written by Drew Chapin , who ran all of this on his own name first. © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## How to increase podcast downloads: four levers, and one of them takes five minutes
URL: https://discoverability.co/guides/how-to-increase-podcast-downloads/

Home / Guides / Making a podcast findable: the free afternoon, then the catalog Podcasts How to increase podcast downloads: four levers, and one of them takes five minutes Only your host counts downloads. Apple and Spotify never report them, so the number you're chasing sits in one dashboard and the rules that decide it are published. Four things move it: the first category in your RSS feed, the episode titles Apple's search reads, a free pitch form Apple's editors actually work from, and the YouTube surface your feed isn't on today. Do the feed fix first, because it takes five minutes. What you actually get Four real levers and no promised number. The category fix decides which Spotify chart your show can appear on at all, the Apple pitch can land you on Home, New, or a category page, and YouTube opens a surface your feed isn't on today. No platform publishes a causal claim , not Apple, not Spotify, not YouTube, so anyone quoting you a download figure for doing this is guessing at it. What it costs you Nothing here has a fee. The pitch is the only slow part: your show has to already be live on Apple Podcasts, and a brand new show needs at least a trailer live in its feed. Apple asks a request to carry the exact title, URL and category of your show, a synopsis, the format, host and guest background, and your marketing plans with dates. Showcase Hero artwork only matters if you want the top of New. The YouTube feed route needs the email address published in your RSS feed. What stops it working Downloads are deduplicated on IP address plus user agent inside a 24-hour window. The measurement spec's own example: the same file pulled 10 times by 6 user agents behind one IP counts as 6 downloads. Re-downloading your own episode does essentially nothing, because the repeats collapse: ten pulls from six user agents behind one IP still count six, once. And a play that never transfers a minute of audio is not a download , so an autoplay or preview that never reaches a minute of audio never reaches the number. Ask your host which 24-hour window it uses Open your hosting provider's stats page, because that is the only download count in existence . Apple Podcasts Connect reports Followers, Listeners, Engaged Listeners, Plays and Average Consumption, Spotify reports Plays, and Apple says plainly that its analytics focus on aggregated listening and viewing completion rates from unique devices rather than downloads. The three numbers will never reconcile , and an afternoon spent making them agree is an afternoon gone. Send your host one question today: fixed calendar day, or rolling 24-hour window. The IAB Tech Lab measurement guidelines require a certified company to disclose which one it uses in a corporate description of methodology, and the two windows produce different totals from identical listening . Ask in the same message whether they are certified, then check the answer yourself in the Podcast Compliance section of the IAB list of compliant companies . The rule underneath all of it, in the spec's words: to count as a valid download, the header information plus enough of the podcast content to play for 1 minute should have been downloaded. So the only thing that moves the number is more separate devices getting a minute into the audio. Everything below is a way to reach more of them. Reorder the categories in your RSS feed Do this one now, it's the cheapest win on the page. Spotify's rule is that it uses the first category listed in your RSS feed to decide which chart your show can appear on, so open the show settings at your host and move the category you actually want into first position. Spotify's own instruction when the chart is wrong is to update your podcast's categories in your RSS feed, and it says your podcast host can help with this. It matters because of which chart you're aiming at. Spotify publishes three : Top Podcasts, the top 200 podcasts in each country based on weekly unique audience, Trending Podcasts, the top 200 gaining popularity, and Top podcasts by category, the top 50 podcasts in each category, which Spotify notes is only available in select countries. Where it runs, the category chart is the one of the three a smaller show can realistically reach , and the first category in your feed is what qualifies you for it. Charts update daily. Then open your feed URL in a browser and read the category order there , not in the form you just typed into. The published feed is what Spotify reads, and it's the only place the change is real. Fix the episode titles Apple's search reads Apple names exactly three ranking inputs : metadata, which is the show name, channel name and episode title, popularity, meaning podcasts with large followers and plays in Apple Podcasts, and user behavior, meaning podcasts that get played or followed from search results. Only the first one is yours to edit this afternoon , so that's where the afternoon goes. Apple's instruction is to make channel, show and episode titles specific and unique, and to avoid names that are too generic or too similar to existing shows, emojis, and repeated episode titles. Go through the back catalog and kill the duplicate episode titles first , because a run of episodes sharing one title is the version of this that costs you the most. Ratings and reviews are not factored into Apple search results. Apple states it directly: they help indicate a podcast's newness, popularity and quality, and they are not factored into Search. Most published growth advice still tells you to chase reviews for ranking, and that advice is wrong at the source . Pitch Apple's editors two weeks out, for a Monday Apple employs editors who recommend shows, and they take pitches through one form . It's the pitch form , hosted on Airtable, and it needs a current browser, Chrome, Firefox, Safari or Edge : anything older answers with "Sorry, your browser version is not supported" and no form at all. Your feed has to be live on Apple Podcasts before you send it, and a brand new show needs at least a trailer live in the feed. And it is one submission per country: Apple says you need to submit a new pitch form for each country you'd like to be considered for. Two timing rules, both Apple's own words. Requests must be submitted two weeks in advance of the desired featured date. And if you request a Monday as the feature date, your request falls naturally within their planning, so pick a Monday at least fourteen days out and work backward . Curation runs on Home, New, and within select category pages on the Search tab. Apple's tips page says what a request should carry: a compelling subject line, the exact title, URL and category of the show, an engaging synopsis, a description of the format, host and guest backgrounds, marketing plans with dates, conforming artwork, who the show appeals to, why the timing works, and any subscription benefits. The one hard art requirement is narrow : any request for a position at the top of New requires a Showcase Hero art submission for consideration. Everywhere else, your existing artwork is the artwork. If you're not selected, Apple's own instruction is to submit a new request after six to eight weeks. Don't resubmit sooner and don't go looking for an appeal, because there's no published editorial address and no status page. Apple may come back for more information, so watch the email address you put on the request . Open the YouTube surface In YouTube Studio, click Create , then New podcast , then Create a new podcast . It asks for a podcast title, a description, visibility, and a square thumbnail, with 1280x1280 pixels recommended , then Create saves it. If your episodes are already on the channel, go to Content , then Playlists , hover the playlist, click Options , then Add podcast features , add the square thumbnail, and click Done . Two things get shows stuck here. YouTube tells you to avoid generic podcast titles such as "Full Episodes," "New Uploads," "Podcast," and not to add extra words to the title unless they're part of the show's name. And some playlists aren't eligible for podcast features even after you designate them, including content the creator doesn't own. To deliver by feed instead, go to Content , then Podcasts , hover the podcast and click Details , and under RSS settings click Connect to RSS feed . Choosing episodes is a separate pass on the same page: click Show more at the bottom of the Podcast details page, select under Episodes to upload , review the visibility details, and click Save . YouTube emails a verification code to the address published in your feed, and you enter it and click Verify . If you don't control that address, your host has to change it and there is no manual override. Titles and descriptions can't contain invalid characters such as ">" or "<" or any HTML, and feed ingestion is only available in select countries and regions. Be clear with yourself about what this surface is. A YouTube play never touches your host's server, so it never becomes a download in the count from the first section. It reaches people your feed doesn't, and that is the entire reason to do it. Set the Spotify show controls and take Apple's free assets On your Spotify show page, Spotify asks for three settings and each one takes a minute: set a best place to start so a new listener lands on your strongest episode instead of the newest, choose host recommendations , and pick the 60 second episode preview, which Spotify says appears across its home feed and podcast subfeeds. The same page carries the two least glamorous instructions on this list, and the audio one is the one people skip : update your podcast frequently, and watch your volume, because in Spotify's words the number one reason listeners lose interest in a podcast is when it's hard to hear. Then take the free promotion assets rather than building them. Apple Podcasts Marketing Tools gives you Links & badges, Promote Assets, and QR Codes generated from your live show, so the link you post is the one that opens the app and you're not hand-making a graphic at midnight . If the number moves and you didn't do anything A host migration is a measurement change before it's an audience change. Ask the new host for its corporate description of methodology and, specifically, whether it counts on a fixed 24-hour window or a rolling one, then compare like for like before you tell a client, a sponsor or yourself that the show is down. The same goes for a month when your host recertifies. If an advertiser challenges your numbers, the defensible answer is your host, not your spreadsheet. A host certified under the IAB Tech Lab podcast measurement program is on the compliant companies list. If yours isn't on it, don't describe your downloads as IAB-compliant, because that's a claim you can't substantiate. A small show reading zero inside Apple is usually not broken. Apple holds data back for a timeframe until at least five unique listeners have played something, so a new show or a quiet week shows you nothing and looks like a bug. Never quote one platform's metric as another's. Apple counts a Play when somebody pressed play, and an Engaged Listener at 20 minutes or 40% of an episode. Spotify counts Plays on its own definition. Your host counts downloads at one minute of transferred audio. Three different questions, three different numbers , and none of them is a bigger version of another. On this page Ask your host which 24-hour window it uses Reorder the categories in your RSS feed Fix the episode titles Apple's search reads Pitch Apple's editors two weeks out, for a Monday Open the YouTube surface Set the Spotify show controls and take Apple's free assets If the number moves and you didn't do anything Written by Drew Chapin → Updated 2026-09-08 Rather not do this yourself? Podcast Growth → The back catalog is the part that doesn't fit in an afternoon Do the category fix, the title pass and the Apple pitch yourself today, because all three are free and none of them needs us. What doesn't fit in an afternoon is the catalog , every episode turned into a page the open web can actually find, with a full transcript and written content built around the guests and the questions people are already typing. Our Podcast Growth service is quoted against your feed, and it starts with us showing you what people are already searching for in the episodes you've published. Have us do it. Everything above, filed for you, chased for you, and reported back. One flat fee. See the service → Every guide we publish is free and ungated. Browse all of them , see what we do and what it costs , or read why we built this company . Written by Drew Chapin , who ran all of this on his own name first. © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## How to make your home address unsearchable
URL: https://discoverability.co/guides/how-to-make-your-address-unsearchable/

Home / Guides / Personal information removal: a dozen sites, a dozen forms, and they repost Guide How to make your home address unsearchable Google will hide the page carrying your address. It won't delete it. Two requests do the work, both free, and neither one asks for your ID : a monitoring tool that watches for new results, and a form that takes a list of URLs. The address stays live on the site that published it, so the order matters . Here's the sequence, what each request buys, and what to do when it comes back. Hidden, not deleted Google's own policy says it plainly: whether your request is approved or denied, the info still exists on the source web page . The listing keeps its URL, stays live, and stays reachable by anyone who types it in or finds it on another search engine. What you're buying is that a stranger who Googles your name stops landing on it . No ID, but a fuller dossier No ID upload, no phone code, no notarized affidavit. Google wants documents about the pages, not documents about you : the exact URLs, screenshots, the search results pages and the terms you typed. The real cost runs the other way. To have the monitor watch for your address, you hand Google every address, every phone number, your maiden name and your nickname , and it will take your Social Security, passport and driver's license numbers too. That's a genuine trade, not a formality. Removal is per URL, always A site that has built several pages about you needs every one of those URLs on the form , and the next one it generates is a new result that needs a new request. Google's monitor tells you when that happens; it never removes anything by itself . That's normal behavior for a people-search site, not an exception, and it's why one successful removal feels like the end and isn't. Write down every URL before you file anything Search your name in quotes, then your name plus your city, then your name plus each relative the listing named. Copy the exact URL of every page that comes back, not the site's homepage. One profile usually produces several: the main page, a print or share view, and separate pages for relatives and past addresses. Every one of those is its own removal. Screenshot each page while you're on it, and copy the Google results page URL you found it on plus the exact words you typed. Google asks for all three of those on the form , and going back to reconstruct them a week later is where people quit. Put them in one document now and both requests below take minutes instead of an evening. Take it down at the source before you ask Google to hide it Google removal hides a link. The opt-out on the site itself is the only step that takes the address off the page , and Google says as much in its removal policy : approved or denied, the information still exists on the source web page. Find the site's opt-out or Do Not Sell link, usually in the footer, and file that first. If you live in California, one request at privacy.ca.gov/drop reaches every registered data broker at once . Brokers had to begin processing DROP requests on August 1, 2026, and to check the platform at least once every 45 days after that. Verification runs through the California Identity Gateway, where you choose what information to provide. If the site wants money to take your listing down, don't pay it. Use Google's removal form and pick "Content is on a site with exploitative removal practices" instead of the personal-information branch. Google's two stated requirements are that the website isn't a business review site and that its removal practices necessitate payment to get the content removed. Turn on Google's monitor and feed it every version of your name Go to myactivity.google.com/results-about-you and sign in. Signed out it's a wall with a "Sign in to get started" button, and there is no anonymous version of this tool . Choose "Get started", or "Settings" if you've been here before, then enter your name and the information you want watched. Enter the address itself, and then every name you have ever used at it : maiden name, nickname, middle initial forms. Google's help page lists the fields it accepts, including nickname, maiden name, multiple phone numbers, multiple home addresses and multiple email addresses. The matcher keys off name plus information, so a variant you skip is a result you never see . Set your notifications, then wait. Google says matches appear within a few hours and land in the "To review" tab. Two limits before you lean on this: Google states the feature is rolling out to users over 18 in certain markets and doesn't publish the market list, and an empty "To review" tab looks identical to being clean . File the removals from the To review tab Open "To review" , click a result to expand it, and choose "Request to remove" . Google sends an email within the next few hours confirming that the request was submitted, and the request is already in review whether or not you open it . The same address is where the status update lands, so check your spam folder if nothing has arrived. Track everything under "Removal requests" , where each one carries one of four labels: In progress, Approved, Denied, or Undone. Nothing commits Google to a review turnaround. You get hours on the match notification and hours on the confirmation email, and after that only a note that there may be a delay between approval and the result leaving search. Leave "Undo" alone. Google says undoing a request doesn't guarantee the page comes back, and if anybody else's removal request on that same URL was approved, Google won't be able to show it again even if you undo yours. It isn't the reversible switch it looks like. File the manual form for every URL the monitor misses The monitor only surfaces pages it can match to a name string, so most of the URLs you collected in step one will never show up in "To review" . Those go through Google's removal request form , which is three pages and still asks for no ID. Page one: choose "Content contains your personal information" and give your country of residence, both on the same page. Page two: under "Select the personal information you would like removed", pick "Address, phone number, and/or e-mail address" . Then paste your URLs, one per line, up to 1,000 lines . Google reviews only the specific pages you list, so the profile, the print view and each relatives page each get their own line. The question that stops people is "Is there malicious or threatening intent expressed directly in the content on the URL or domain?" For an ordinary people-search listing the answer is No, and No does not disqualify you . Threat language belongs to the separate doxxing route, not to plain contact-information removal. A guide that reads that question as a requirement is wrong , and following it costs you a request you were entitled to file. Upload your screenshots, then paste the Google results page URLs and the exact search terms that produced them . Skipping that last part is the most common reason a request stalls. Give your real name and email at the end: you can file anonymously, and if you do you never find out whether it was approved, denied or lost . Set a date to check, and expect to refile Put a date in your calendar two weeks out and run the exact same searches again . A delisting is bound to one URL, so the page you removed stays removed, but a site that spins up a new URL for the same profile has produced a new result needing a new request. The monitor notifies you; it removes nothing on its own. If the source site actually deleted the page and it still comes up in Google Search results, don't file a removal request. Sign in to the Refresh Outdated Content tool and submit the URL on the "Page" tab. A page that is still live is not a case for this tool , even if the site edited your address out of it. A denial usually isn't arguable. Google declines results from educational or government institutions and from newspapers , along with anything it judges important or newsworthy, and an address in a county assessor file, a voter roll, a court docket or a local news story is the ordinary case rather than the edge case. The fix there is the record custodian, not Google. On this page Write down every URL before you file anything Take it down at the source before you ask Google to hide it Turn on Google's monitor and feed it every version of your name File the removals from the To review tab File the manual form for every URL the monitor misses Set a date to check, and expect to refile Written by Drew Chapin → Updated 2026-09-08 Rather not do this yourself? Personal Information Removal → Related guides How to use Google's removal tools on a court record → How to remove court records from Google → Google hides one link at a time File the Google requests yourself. When the same address is sitting on people-search sites you haven't found yet, Personal Information Removal is $399 , covers the whole broker network, and includes twelve months of monitoring because these sites repost. Have us do it. Everything above, filed for you, chased for you, and reported back. One flat fee. See the service → Every guide we publish is free and ungated. Browse all of them , see what we do and what it costs , or read why we built this company . Written by Drew Chapin , who ran all of this on his own name first. © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## How to rank higher in Apple Podcasts: the three fields, and the category that picks your chart
URL: https://discoverability.co/guides/how-to-rank-higher-in-apple-podcasts/

Home / Guides / Making a podcast findable: the free afternoon, then the catalog Podcasts How to rank higher in Apple Podcasts: the three fields, and the category that picks your chart Apple publishes the ranking inputs itself, and only three of them are things you type: the show name, the channel name, and the episode title. Everything else is listening, follows, and completion rate. There's no submission for rank, no appeal, and no way to buy a position. Here's what to change at your podcast host today (or in Apple Podcasts Connect, if that's where the show was created), which category setting decides the chart you sit on, and the one thing Apple does let you submit. What you actually get Three text fields and a category. Apple names the inputs to Search itself: metadata, which is the show name, the channel name, and the episode title , plus popularity and user behavior, which are just people listening. The charts run on listening, follows, and completion rate . So today's work is editing four things and then earning the rest. There is no submission for rank and nothing to appeal. What it costs you No money, no ID, no application. It takes an Apple Podcasts Connect account, a live RSS feed with at least one published episode, and the login to whatever host writes that feed, because that's where the metadata lives unless you built the show inside Connect. Then you wait: Apple says a change appears on Apple Podcasts within 24 hours . Anyone quoting you a price for a chart position is selling something Apple says does not exist, because rankings cannot be purchased or sold . What stops it working Spending your on-air ask on the wrong thing. Apple states it flatly: ratings and reviews do not influence Charts or Search . A review drive persuades the person reading your show page. It is not a ranking lever, and most published advice still sells it as one. The word subscribe is the other half of this: on Apple Podcasts that means paid. Follow is the free action, and follows are one of the three things the charts count. Confirm the show is in the index at all Sign in at podcastsconnect.apple.com and look at the show's status before you touch anything else. Green means it is ready or available on Apple Podcasts, yellow means a process is still running, and red means you have to do something before it can appear. A show that isn't in the catalog cannot be ranked, so anything other than Published is the whole problem and no amount of title editing will move it. If the show isn't in your account yet, click the Add (+) button, choose New Show , then Add a show with an RSS feed , paste the feed URL and click Add . Review the Show Information page, set Content Rights , add contact information, then open Availability on the left and set Countries or Regions, Distribution, Transcripts, Show Release and Show Claiming. Click Save , then publish. Apple's own steps add the part people skip: every show has to pass technical validations and a review process , and Apple publishes no turnaround for it , so don't believe anyone who quotes you one. Then check the country. Apple says Search will only display the channels, shows, and episodes creators made available in each country or region , across over 170 countries and regions, all enabled for new shows by default . If somebody abroad tells you they can't find the show, look here first , in the same Availability panel. Fix the three fields Search actually reads Apple lists what orders Search results, and the only factor you type is metadata: the show name, the channel name, and the episode title . The other two are popularity and user behavior, meaning follows, plays, and whether people play or follow you straight out of a search result. Description, author and transcripts are not on that list , so write the description for a human being and stop stuffing keywords into it. The instruction is literal, so treat it as a checklist: make sure your channel name, show titles, and episode titles are specific and unique so they may appear in relevant searches , be distinctive, avoid names that are too generic or too similar to existing shows, and avoid using emojis and repeated episode titles . If half your episodes are called Interview or your titles all open with a number and a pipe, that's the edit to make this afternoon . On the titles themselves, Apple's editors ask for brief and focused and tell you to leave episode numbers and metadata out of the title , because including them can push the part that matters out of view. Make all of these edits at your host, not in Apple , unless the show was created inside Podcasts Connect, since Apple reads this back out of your RSS feed . Set the category, because the category is the chart Charts are associated with categories, so your category selection decides which charts you can appear on at all. Apple says the primary category is what places your show on each category page, in Top Charts, and in personalized recommendations , while the secondary category feeds select category pages, recommendations, and the editorially curated collections on New. You get two categories, primary and secondary, plus a subcategory for each where one exists . A show can appear on the charts for every category and subcategory it selects, and Apple encourages filling those slots wherever they are honestly relevant, which means an empty subcategory slot is a chart you are not on . Nine subcategories got their own charts and pages in June 2023: Mental Health, Relationships, Self-Improvement, Personal Journals, Entrepreneurship, Documentary, Parenting, Books and Language Learning . Apple's worked example is the U.S. Mental Health charts, which display the top 200 shows and the top 200 episodes in that market on a mix of listening, follows and completion rate. If one of those nine honestly describes your show, put it in. In Podcasts Connect, select the show, select the categories and subcategories, and save . In the feed it is the itunes:category tag, and the value has to match Apple's table exactly, capitals and all . A category on its own looks like <itunes:category text="History" />, and a category with a subcategory nests inside it: <itunes:category text="Education"><itunes:category text="Language Learning" /></itunes:category>. Copy each value out of Apple's table rather than typing it , because any category name containing an ampersand has to be escaped in the feed. Ask for the follow, not the review Apple won't publish the algorithm , but it names what the charts measure: listening, follows, and completion rate . Follows is the one a call to action moves directly, and Apple's line is blunt : the more followers and engagement, the higher a show's chart position . Say follow, and say it in the episode. Apple's own sample wording asks listeners to follow the show on Apple Podcasts so they get notified each time a new episode is available. Don't say subscribe. On Apple Podcasts that word means a paid subscription, so a subscribe ask points your listener at a purchase instead of the free button that feeds the chart. Completion rate is the third input and the one no promotion can buy. It is earned by cutting the stretch of the episode people skip. Reviews still do real work on the human reading your show page, and Apple encourages you to ask for them , so keep asking. Just stop counting them as chart work. Measure it in Analytics in Podcasts Connect. Select a show for net new followers over the last week, month, 60 days and all time, then open Trends for the graph over time. Followers are calculated and updated daily , so a show that launched this morning with zero followers should be checked tomorrow, not this hour. Check that the change landed Apple detects a feed edit and updates it on Apple Podcasts within 24 hours . The thing to read is the Last Refresh date and time in Apple Podcasts Connect , not the app on your phone. If that stamp has moved and your change still isn't there, the change never left your host . When it still hasn't moved after a full 24 hours, work Apple's order of operations : confirm the change is saved and published at your host, check the show's status in Podcasts Connect, then select the show and click Refresh Feed . Artwork is the exception to all of this , because a new image needs a different filename before Apple will pick it up. Don't conclude anything about ranking from one afternoon. Top Shows and Trending Episodes are refreshed throughout the day, and Trending Episodes is built to reflect recent listening, so a position can shift within hours . One screenshot is not a result. Check on the same day each week and compare those. Submit the one thing Apple lets you submit Rank takes no submissions. Editorial featuring does , and it is a separate system: it buys consideration for placement on Home, New, and select category pages in Search , with no documented effect on your chart position or your Search order. The route is the feature request form Apple links from its own pitch guidance . Your feed has to be live on Apple Podcasts before you can pitch , and Apple asks for the exact title, URL and category of what you are pitching. Requests must be submitted two weeks in advance of the date you want. Ask for a Monday: Apple refreshes at least once a week in most countries and regions, and says the majority of updates publish on Mondays. Apple lists what a strong request carries : a compelling subject line, a brief synopsis, the show's format, background on hosts and guests, your marketing, social and PR plans with dates , and why this is the moment for it. Featuring art is not required , with one exception: a request for a position at the top of New requires a Showcase Hero art submission , built on Apple's template, delivered as a layered PSD, carrying no network or sponsor logos, and visually distinct from your show artwork. Nobody tells you if it worked. Apple says you will not be notified if your show is featured , so watch the New tab and your category pages yourself. Pitch no more than once every six to eight weeks , and file a separate form for every country you want to be considered in. Launching something new: get a trailer live at least two weeks ahead of your first full episodes, because the feed has to exist before the pitch can . If nothing moved Not showing up in Search at all. Confirm an episode is actually published rather than the feed merely submitted, then check the status in Podcasts Connect and work Apple's availability checklist : approved and showing Published, a release date already in the past, clearances in the countries you care about, and no itunes:block tag on the episodes that are missing . Analytics blank. That is a floor, not a fault. At least five unique users have to play your content inside the time frame you selected before Apple will show the metric, and you get a Not Enough Data message until they do. A chart position you think is wrong. There is nothing to file and nobody to appeal to. Apple states that automatic downloads are not factored into rankings, and rankings cannot be purchased or sold , says altering podcasts with the sole intent of increasing chart rankings is discouraged, and monitors the charts to check the engagement is genuine. It also states that causing activities that interfere with the integrity of Apple Podcasts is against its content guidelines , so the chart-placement services are selling you a product Apple says is not for sale. None of this reaches anywhere else. Everything on this page changes your position inside one app. It does nothing on Spotify, nothing on YouTube, and nothing for the person typing your guest's name into Google, because an episode inside a listening app is not a web page . That part is separate work. On this page Confirm the show is in the index at all Fix the three fields Search actually reads Set the category, because the category is the chart Ask for the follow, not the review Check that the change landed Submit the one thing Apple lets you submit If nothing moved Written by Drew Chapin → Updated 2026-09-08 Rather not do this yourself? Podcast Growth → Apple's index ends at Apple Do every step above yourself today. It's free, it's an afternoon, and nobody should invoice you for editing three fields and a category . What it can't do is put your back catalog in front of the people searching the open web for your guest, your topic, or the exact question you spent forty minutes answering. That's what our Podcast Growth work does: a real page for every episode, the full transcript published alongside it, and writing built around what people are already searching for. Send us the feed URL and we'll come back with the scope and the price. Have us do it. Everything above, filed for you, chased for you, and reported back. One flat fee. See the service → Every guide we publish is free and ungated. Browse all of them , see what we do and what it costs , or read why we built this company . Written by Drew Chapin , who ran all of this on his own name first. © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## How to get cited by ChatGPT, and what you actually control
URL: https://discoverability.co/guides/how-to-rank-in-chatgpt-answers/

Home / Guides / Search and AI visibility: what you actually control Search and AI How to get cited by ChatGPT, and what you actually control There's no submission form for ChatGPT and no ranking checklist , so ignore anyone selling you one. OpenAI documents exactly one thing you control: whether OAI-SearchBot can reach your pages. That's two lines in robots.txt, then a look at your firewall logs, because the firewall is where this actually fails and it fails silently. Give it about 24 hours . Everything past that is OpenAI's call, and they say so in writing. What you get: eligibility, not placement Access, and nothing past it. OpenAI's complete public statement on ranking is one sentence: ChatGPT ranks search results using multiple factors intended to help users find relevant, reliable information, and placement is not guaranteed . There's no checklist behind that sentence, so an agency selling you ChatGPT ranking factors invented them. What you can change is whether your pages are eligible to be quoted at all. What it costs: two lines and a log check No fee, no ID, no application, no account. You need edit access to the site's robots.txt file and somebody who can read the firewall or CDN logs, and that's the real gate: if you don't control the website, none of this is available to you . Budget an hour, then about 24 hours of waiting before you judge anything, which is the only interval OpenAI publishes. What stops it: the firewall, silently A perfect robots.txt with Cloudflare or a JavaScript challenge sitting in front of it looks exactly like being allowed. OpenAI names bot mitigation as the second of three layers and says these systems can mistakenly block legitimate crawlers, often returning 403 Forbidden errors. Nothing tells you. There's no console, no error and no notification, so your own access logs are the only proof. Check what your robots.txt says about OAI-SearchBot Open your own robots.txt in a browser, at your domain followed by /robots.txt. You're looking for two things: a Disallow under OAI-SearchBot, and a blanket Disallow under User-agent: *. Either one takes you out. OpenAI's wording is flat: sites that are opted out of OAI-SearchBot will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers, though can still appear as navigational links. Add the block OpenAI publishes as its own example in its crawler troubleshooting article : User-agent: OAI-SearchBot on one line, Allow: / on the next. A group addressed to that bot by name takes precedence over your User-agent: * group, so a blanket disallow stops applying to it. Deploy the file and leave it alone. Then wait about a day before you judge anything. OpenAI's crawler documentation gives exactly one interval, and this is it: it can take ~24 hours from a site's robots.txt update for our systems to adjust. Crawl frequency, recrawl cadence and time to first citation are published nowhere, so don't let anyone sell you a timeline . Prove OAI-SearchBot actually reached your pages Grep your access logs for the string OAI-SearchBot. Requests for robots.txt carry an extra marker in the user agent, the words robots.txt sitting between the version number and the URL, so you can separate those from real page requests even when your logs don't record paths. Zero page hits means you're blocked, not unranked , and those are different problems with different fixes. If you do see hits, read the status codes, because each layer fails with its own signature . A 403 Forbidden is your web protection or bot mitigation. A 429 Too Many Requests is rate limiting, and OpenAI names that code specifically. A 200 that hands back a challenge page instead of your content is a CAPTCHA or JavaScript check, which is the third layer and the one that looks healthiest in a status report. Allowlist by user agent first, at the WAF and at the CDN. If your security stack demands IP ranges, OpenAI publishes them at openai.com/searchbot.json , and warns in the same article against relying solely on short-term IP observations from logs. Make the user agent the primary rule and the IP file a backstop. Clear the block in Cloudflare In the Cloudflare dashboard, open AI Crawl Control , then the Security tab, then the Crawlers tab. The table carries a Requests column showing allowed against unsuccessful and a Robots.txt violations column. Find the OpenAI search crawler, go to the Action column, and select Allow . Cloudflare's own instructions are the reference. Then audit the rules you already have , because that panel doesn't repeal them. Cloudflare reclassified bots by behavior on July 1, 2026 into Search, Agent and Training , and blocking Training does not block OAI-SearchBot while blocking Search does. The older AI Search category is retained for backward compatibility , its documented example is OAI-SearchBot itself, and rules written against it still fire. Two limits before you close the tab. On the free plan, AI Crawl Control identifies crawlers by user agent string only , and paid plans add Bot Management detection. And OpenAI states that OAI-AdsBot is officially verified and allowlisted by Cloudflare while making no such claim for OAI-SearchBot , so don't assume a verified-bot list already covers your search access. Three moves that don't do what publishers think Blocking GPTBot is a training decision and nothing else. OpenAI's crawler doc says a webmaster can allow OAI-SearchBot in order to appear in search results while disallowing GPTBot. If you disallowed GPTBot to keep your work out of model training, that choice costs you nothing in ChatGPT search , and a guide telling you it killed your AI visibility is wrong. ChatGPT-User in your logs proves nothing. OpenAI says it outright: ChatGPT-User is not used to determine whether content may appear in Search, and it tells you to use OAI-SearchBot in robots.txt for managing search opt outs. That agent fires when a person asks ChatGPT to go look at a page. Allowing only ChatGPT-User fixes nothing. Don't ship a noindex tag while you're in there. Per the Publisher FAQs , if OpenAI gets the URL of a disallowed page from a third-party search provider or by crawling your other pages, it may still surface just the link and page title in ChatGPT Atlas. noindex suppresses even that fallback. Note the trap in their own wording: in order for our crawler to read a meta tag, it must be allowed to crawl the relevant page . Measure ChatGPT referrals with utm_source=chatgpt.com There's no Search Console for this. No URL inspection, no index status, no submission tool, no coverage report, and no support queue for a site that isn't being cited. Your analytics is the whole feedback loop, so wire it up before you start changing pages or you'll have nothing to compare against. OpenAI's Publisher FAQs give you one hook: ChatGPT automatically includes the UTM parameter utm_source=chatgpt.com in referral URLs . Build a GA4 segment on that source today, or filter your server logs on the same string. It's the only publisher-visible proof that a citation turned into a visit. It only fires when somebody clicks. A citation that gets read and not clicked is invisible to you, and OpenAI publishes no impression count, no citation report and no rank position anywhere. Treat the referral number as a floor, never as a measure of how often you're quoted. Selling products: the one submission path that exists On Shopify or Etsy, you're already done. The merchant page says it plainly: if you sell through Shopify or Etsy, your catalog is already integrated, and no additional setup or application is required. Don't pay anybody to submit a feed you already have. Everywhere else, chatgpt.com/merchants is an application, not an upload . OpenAI's commerce docs say onboarding product feeds is currently available to approved partners, and the page tells applicants they're on the waitlist. Required on the form: first name, last name, work title, LinkedIn, work email, company, headquarter country, your merchant website, primary product categories, what you're interested in, and your unique SKU count. Only two things are optional: the product-feed-readiness checkbox and the free-text box at the end. A feed is not a prerequisite for being cited. OpenAI answers this in its own FAQ, asked as whether you need a product feed if ChatGPT already crawls your site: no, but feeds give you greater control over how your products appear. Shopping in ChatGPT is live for users in the U.S. , so outside that, the crawler work above is the whole job. When the crawl is clean and you're still not cited You've reached the end of the documented surface, and there's nothing to appeal to. No reconsideration request, no support path, no ranking factors to work against. The complete public statement sits under Make your website available in search results , and it ends with placement is not guaranteed. Anyone selling you a ChatGPT ranking package is charging for a checklist that doesn't exist. Being cited wrongly is the one thing with a real form. Go to OpenAI's Report Content form and pick ChatGPT search under Which product or feature does this relate to. Required: first name, last name, email address, country of ordinary residence, that product choice, a reason, a description under What content are you reporting, and a yes or no under Tell us if you believe the content or activity is illegal. Your link goes in Add URL , the screenshot and Additional information fields are optional, and a Turnstile check means you're sending it by hand. The reason list has no accuracy option , because the form is built for policy violations and illegal content, so Spam, fraud & deception is the nearest fit for a misquote. The lighter route is in the product: thumbs-down on the response, or the menu on a product card. None of this makes ChatGPT quote you. It makes you eligible to be quoted, and eligibility is a precondition, not a result. On this page Check what your robots.txt says about OAI-SearchBot Prove OAI-SearchBot actually reached your pages Clear the block in Cloudflare Three moves that don't do what publishers think Measure ChatGPT referrals with utm_source=chatgpt.com Selling products: the one submission path that exists When the crawl is clean and you're still not cited Written by Drew Chapin → Updated 2026-09-08 Rather not do this yourself? SEO and AI Optimization → Related guides Schema markup, and what it actually buys you → How to appear in AI search results: there's nothing to submit → Eligible, and still not the answer Do the robots.txt fix yourself today. It's free, it's two lines, and nobody should charge you for it. When you're fully crawlable and ChatGPT still names somebody else, the work moves to your pages and to the sources feeding that answer, which is what our SEO and AI Optimization service does: we record what ChatGPT and Google say about you today, fix the site and the references behind them, then ask the same questions again so you can see what moved. It's quoted for your situation , because scope depends on the searches and the platforms in play. Have us do it. Everything above, filed for you, chased for you, and reported back. One flat fee. See the service → Every guide we publish is free and ungated. Browse all of them , see what we do and what it costs , or read why we built this company . Written by Drew Chapin , who ran all of this on his own name first. © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## How to rank in Spotify podcast search: what you control, and what you don't
URL: https://discoverability.co/guides/how-to-rank-in-spotify-podcast-search/

Home / Guides / Making a podcast findable: the free afternoon, then the catalog Podcasts How to rank in Spotify podcast search: what you control, and what you don't There's no submit form any more. If your show is hosted with Spotify for Creators it's already on Spotify. Hosted anywhere else, you claim it at creators.spotify.com with your RSS feed and an 8-digit code, and new shows usually appear in search a few hours later. After that Spotify says search results are often impacted by play count, so the two things you can still fix today are the feed and the first category in it . What you actually get A place in the index, not a position in it. Claiming a show is free, and Spotify says new shows usually appear in search after a few hours. Where you land is a different question: Spotify states that search results are often impacted by a show's play count, so a new show can sit below bigger ones on a search for its own title. Spotify publishes no ranking control for creators. What you have to hand over No ID, no fee, no lawyer. You need a Spotify account, your RSS feed URL, and access to the inbox listed in your feed's itunes:email field, because that's where the 8-digit code lands. Hosted anywhere but Spotify, you need your host's login too, since categories, artwork and that email address all live in the feed and Spotify only reads them. The form takes minutes; the wait on the code is the part you can't schedule. What stops it working The verification email. The code goes to the address inside your RSS feed, not the one on your Spotify account, and it comes from noreply@hello.creators.spotify.com. Spotify documents several causes: hosts that mask or replace the address in the feed, company or custom domains its mail doesn't reach, and signing up through Apple, Facebook or Google, which sends the code to that account's registered address instead. The fix is a Gmail or Outlook address in the feed , changed at your host. Search Spotify for the show before you change anything Open the Spotify app or the web player and search your exact show title. If it comes up, you're in the index already and what you have is a placement problem, so skip down to what Spotify says moves you up. If nothing comes up, it's a distribution problem instead, and the next two sections are your afternoon. Published for the first time today? Wait a few hours before touching anything. Spotify's line on this is that new shows can take a little time to appear in search results but usually appear after a few hours . There's no queue to watch and nothing you can do to speed it up. If you host with Spotify for Creators, there's nothing to submit. Spotify publishes those shows to listeners automatically, so a show that's missing usually means no episode has published yet, or that the few hours Spotify asks for haven't passed, rather than search failing you. Everyone else is claiming or submitting a feed, and that's the rest of this page. Claim the show at creators.spotify.com Check your host first, because that's where Spotify sends you. It keeps a submission guide for Acast, Buzzsprout, Captivate, Libsyn, Megaphone, Podbean, RedCircle, Simplecast, Spreaker, Transistor and a long list of others, all linked from Getting your show on Spotify . If your host is on that list, its own submit button is the shortest route you have . The direct route is a claim, and its entry point is buried. Ignore any guide pointing you at podcasters.spotify.com/submit, because that address now lands on a page that doesn't exist. Go to creators.spotify.com and log in with any Spotify account, or make one free. On a new account, select Find an existing show , then Somewhere else . On an account that already manages a show, hit your avatar or the three lines in the top-right corner, then Add a new show , then those same two options. On mobile you tap the arrow at the bottom of the screen to see it. Then paste your RSS feed URL or your Spotify show URL. Art19, Ausha, Cast Plus and Zencast have no self-serve route at all. Spotify's instruction for those four is to ask your hosting provider how to distribute to Spotify, so don't lose an afternoon hunting for a form that isn't there. A show can only be claimed once. If a former producer, an agency or an ex-co-host already claimed it, the flow is closed to you, and Spotify's answer is to get the existing admin or owner to invite you from their own account. That's a conversation rather than a form, and it's worth starting today, because you can't change anything inside Spotify until you're on the account. Get the 8-digit code out of the email in your feed The code goes to the address in your RSS feed, not the address on your Spotify account. The field is itunes:email, the sender is noreply@hello.creators.spotify.com, and you copy the 8-digit code straight into the claim form. Before you sit waiting on it, paste your feed URL into a browser tab and read which address is actually in there. Some hosts mask that address or swap in a generic one , and Spotify's fix is to ask the host to expose yours long enough to claim the show. If the address belongs to someone else, that person has to read you the code, so send that message now rather than after you've filled the form in. Company and custom domains are where this dies. Spotify documents that its verification mail sometimes doesn't reach custom or company domains, and the fix it gives is a Gmail or Outlook address in the feed instead . Check spam first, then change it at the host. Spotify then needs a couple of hours to read the new address , and if it still hasn't worked after four hours, that's when you contact Spotify. Hosted with Spotify for Creators, the same field lives in Settings. Go to Settings, then Availability, then Add email to RSS feed , and allow up to 10 minutes for outside platforms to see it. Know before you click it that the address is public in the feed , so use one you don't mind publishing. Fix the feed elements Spotify actually requires A missing elements error won't tell you which element is missing. Spotify's instruction is to contact your hosting platform about the missing details, and the three it names are cover art, title and description. Check those first, since a host dashboard fixes all three in about two minutes. The required list is short, and your host fills most of it. Spotify's delivery spec wants one show per feed, since two podcasts in one RSS isn't supported, plus a title, a link, a description and an itunes:author on the show, and at least one episode, because a podcast needs at least one episode to be public. Every episode needs a guid that stays stable over time, a pubDate in RFC 2822 format, a title, and its audio attached as either an enclosure or a media:content carrying a URL and a file type. Artwork has to be a true square and audio has to be streamable. The spec asks for 1:1 images at the highest resolution you have, as TIFF, PNG or JPEG, and audio as MP3 at 128kbps or better, or MP4 with AAC-LC, up to 12 hours an episode. Replacing an image or an audio file at the same filename ships nothing , because Spotify only re-downloads when the name or path in the feed changes. Upload the new file under a new name. Set the first category and the country list The first category in your feed is the only one that decides chart eligibility. Spotify uses the first category listed in your RSS to decide which chart your show can appear on , so the order of that list is a decision and not a formality. It has to be an Apple Podcasts category, and it nests, so Arts can carry Design underneath it. You change categories at your host, not in Spotify , unless you're hosted with Spotify for Creators, where it sits in Settings. Spotify reads categories out of the feed , so the change at the host is the change. Don't expect it to move where you show up browsing the app either, because Spotify's editors curate those categories separately and chart categories are a different set. Then set a country list, because leaving it out costs you. The spotify:countryOfOrigin element takes a space-separated list of country codes ranked most relevant first, and Spotify's spec says a narrow list has a higher potential to reach its target audience than a wide one, while omitting the element entirely marks the show global with no target market at all. It's a Spotify-specific field, so ask your host whether they'll add it. Keep the show title short enough to survive a phone screen. The spec says consumer-facing fields other than descriptions shouldn't run past 20 characters, because anything longer gets truncated to whatever the device can display. A title padded out with keywords loses its tail on the smaller screens. What Spotify says moves you up, and where to watch it Play count. That's the whole published answer. Spotify's article on shows missing from search says results are often impacted by a show's play count, so newer shows may sit lower down while they're building an audience. Spotify publishes no keyword field, no ranking report and no resubmission route that changes your position, and anyone selling you Spotify search optimization is selling you a guess . The charts run on the same fuel and update daily. Top Podcasts is the top 200 in each country by weekly unique audience, Trending Podcasts is the top 200 gaining popularity on a combination of growth factors, and select countries also carry a top 50 by category. Spotify says the charts are based on listening behavior and engagement, which is why asking listeners to follow the show is worth more than another pass at your metadata. Find them by tapping Search on mobile or Browse on desktop, then Podcasts and Podcast Charts , or at podcastcharts.byspotify.com . Measure it under Analytics, then Discovery. The panel headed Where on Spotify your content was discovered splits into Home, Library and Search, with Impressions, Conversion rate, Plays and Average completion rate against each. Read the Search row carefully, because Spotify bundles search queries, the charts and its own editorial picks into that one number , so it isn't a pure search count. For a single episode, open Episodes, select it, then Analytics and Discovery. Don't buy plays to force any of this. Eligibility for the Verified by Spotify badge explicitly includes safeguards against fraudulent or bot-driven listenership, so bought numbers point straight at a check the platform already runs. High impressions with low plays is Spotify's own description of people seeing you and not clicking, and that's artwork and title work, not a search problem. If it's still missing tomorrow Give every change an hour before you judge it. Spotify checks a subscribed feed several times per hour, and its spec asks for at least an hour for a change at the source to reach the apps. A fix at noon that isn't visible at 12:05 is not a failed fix, and resubmitting on top of it just gives you two things to untangle. Then check the feed yourself, in a browser. Open the feed URL: it should load without a login, it should carry at least one episode, and that episode's audio file should play when you open its address directly. A feed that 404s or a show with no published episode is invisible to Spotify no matter how many times you send it. Then use the contact form, which every creator help article carries. The link reads Can't find what you're looking for? and it opens Spotify's creator contact form . Bring the feed URL, the show name and the exact error text, because Spotify's published troubleshooting stops about where yours does. None of this makes a small show outrank a big one. Claiming the show, fixing the feed and ordering the categories get you into the index and onto the right chart, and after that Spotify's own answer is audience. That part happens off Spotify , in the places people search before they ever open a listening app. On this page Search Spotify for the show before you change anything Claim the show at creators.spotify.com Get the 8-digit code out of the email in your feed Fix the feed elements Spotify actually requires Set the first category and the country list What Spotify says moves you up, and where to watch it If it's still missing tomorrow Written by Drew Chapin → Updated 2026-09-08 Rather not do this yourself? Podcast Growth → Related guides Schema markup, and what it actually buys you → Being in the index isn't the same as being found Claim the show and fix the feed yourself today, because it's free and nobody can do it faster than the person who already has the host login. The part that actually moves you up Spotify's results is more people playing you , and that demand gets built outside the app: our Podcast Growth service turns every episode into a page on the open web, with a full transcript and written content built around what people are already searching, so your back catalog keeps pulling in listeners between releases . Have us do it. Everything above, filed for you, chased for you, and reported back. One flat fee. See the service → Every guide we publish is free and ungated. Browse all of them , see what we do and what it costs , or read why we built this company . Written by Drew Chapin , who ran all of this on his own name first. © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## How to rank on Brave Search: your Google position doesn't carry over
URL: https://discoverability.co/guides/how-to-rank-on-brave-search/

Home / Guides / Search and AI visibility: what you actually control Search and AI How to rank on Brave Search: your Google position doesn't carry over Brave runs its own index and serves its results solely from it , so your Google position counts for nothing here and a removal you won at Google removed nothing from Brave. There's no ranking dial to turn and no account to open. What you control is whether Brave can crawl your current pages, whether it has re-fetched them lately, and whether the wrong URLs are still in there. Here's each one, in order. What you get: a re-crawl, not a position Brave's only self-serve tool re-fetches one URL at a time. There's no account, no bulk upload, no dashboard and no ticket number, so a submission is something you record yourself or lose track of. Brave publishes no turnaround for a re-fetch and says only that the process can take time. The one committed timeline anywhere in Brave's help set is up to 30 days , and that covers a delisting Brave has already agreed to. What it costs you: a URL, or an email Getting a page re-crawled costs one valid URL and nothing else. No account, no ownership proof, no fee. Getting a result delisted costs a written email to privacy@brave.com carrying five specific items, and Brave asks you not to attach ID: it may request proof of identity, but it says do not send it unless requested. A copyright notice is a longer email to a different address and carries real legal exposure. What stops it: your robots rules Brave's crawler doesn't advertise its own user agent , so there's no Brave bot to name in robots.txt, and Brave states the consequence plainly: if a page isn't crawlable by Googlebot, Brave Search's bot won't crawl it either. Submitting that URL for a re-fetch changes nothing while the block stands. Then check the page itself, because robots.txt is not what keeps a page out of an index and a noindex directive is. Search Brave first, because your Google results don't apply Open search.brave.com and run the queries you care about: your name in quotes, your company name, the two or three phrases you want a page to answer. Write down the actual URL sitting at each position. Brave says it on its own help page and again in its privacy notice: the index it creates is independent of other search engines, and Brave Search results are served solely from this index. A first-page result on Google tells you nothing about this list. Run the check by hand, not with a script. Brave gates its results pages with proof-of-work captchas aimed at scrapers and notes that VPN traffic gets flagged, so an automated rank check trips it. If you need to watch positions week after week, pull them through the Brave Search API rather than scraping the results page. One thing to rule out before you trust what you're looking at. Brave documents an opt-in Google fallback mixer , which lets the Brave browser anonymously check Google for the same query and present both sets together, so a URL that's actually out of Brave's index can still land on somebody's screen. If your results look suspiciously like Google's, check again in a different browser before you conclude anything about your ranking. Make sure Brave's crawler can reach the page Open your own robots.txt and read the rules for Googlebot and for the wildcard. Brave's crawler doesn't use a differentiated user agent , which Brave explains on its crawler page as avoiding discrimination from sites that allow only Google, and it spells out the effect: if a domain or page is not crawlable by Googlebot, Brave Search's bot will not crawl it either. So the Googlebot rule is the Brave rule. There's no Brave line to add and nothing to allow by name. Then read the page's own head. Brave's wording is that robots.txt is not used to prevent a page from being indexed, and that a site owner delists a page using the robots noindex directive. A page you want ranking must not be carrying one. Right-click the page, choose View source , and search it with Ctrl + F, because a directive dropped in by a plugin or a theme setting never shows on the rendered page. Crawling isn't the only way in. Brave says its crawler is partially powered by people who opted into the Web Discovery Project in the Brave browser's search settings, so a page can enter the index through browsing rather than through a crawl. That cuts both ways: it explains a page you never submitted, and it means unblocking or blocking a crawler is not a complete answer to how something got there. Submit the URL for a re-fetch Go to search.brave.com/submit-url . The heading reads Insert the URL to be re-fetched , below it sits a single required text box with the placeholder Enter a valid url , and the button says Submit . Paste the full address of one page and send it. That is the entire tool, and it's the same tool Brave points you to from the crawler page, the not-found page and the contact page. One URL at a time, with no bulk upload and no sitemap field. A brand new page, a page whose content you just changed, a page you just took a noindex off: all of them are the same single submission. On timing, Brave's not-found page says only that a page updates or drops out as soon as it gets re-fetched, and that this process can take time. Keep your own list. Brave sends no confirmation, issues no ticket number and publishes no status page, so the record that you submitted a URL on a given date is the one you wrote down. Note the date next to each URL, then re-run the search a week or two later instead of resubmitting the same page every morning. Clear out the dead URLs, and check the status code first An old page still ranking on your name is the same job in reverse. Submit it at the same tool, and you can also email not-found@brave.com . The constraint is the status code: Brave states that only pages returning "404 - Not Found" and "410 - Gone" will be automatically removed. So check what that URL actually returns before you file anything. A friendly not-found template served at HTTP 200, a redirect to your homepage, and a 403 all sit outside the automatic path, and no number of submissions moves them. The fix is at your own server: make the URL return 410, then resubmit it. If you don't control the site, you can still submit the URL, and Brave will remove it automatically if it returns 404 or 410. What's closed to you is the status-code fix, so a soft 404, a redirect or a 403 on someone else's server stays put no matter how many times you resubmit it. A page that's still live and still publishing needs a delisting request, not a re-fetch , and that's the next two sections. Do the source work before you ask Brave to delist anything Brave asks for this first, and it's the difference between a delisting that holds and one that quietly undoes itself. Ask the website to remove the information. Brave's own wording is that crawlers regularly revisit pages and update their indexes, so anything left on the page could be reindexed at some point. Delisting a URL whose page still publishes the thing is temporary by design. If it's your own site, fix the page and check the source, more than the screen . Brave points out that whoever built the site may have coded a business address or telephone number into the page where a browser doesn't show it but a search engine still reads it. Right-click, choose View source , find it with Ctrl + F, and once it's gone, submit that page for a re-fetch so the corrected version is the one Brave holds. If the data sits on a social platform, apply that platform's privacy controls first. Brave names that as a step too. What's left standing after all of it is the case you actually file. File the delisting request at privacy@brave.com There is no form anywhere. Send an email to privacy@brave.com with "RTBF request" in the subject header , which is how Brave routes it, and confirm five things in the body: the full name or names used to run the search on search.brave.com; how the specific content relates to you; your name, or the name of the person you're representing plus their contact email address; the URL of each result you want delisted; and whether that URL carries personal data that is inaccurate, inadequate, irrelevant or excessive, or is otherwise negatively impacting your privacy. Pick that last ground and say it, rather than leaving Brave to choose one. Don't attach your ID. Brave writes that it may ask for proof of identity if necessary, then asks you not to send proof unless it requests it. And if the result is an image, the source URL is the wrong thing to send : Brave wants two addresses beginning https://imgs.search.brave.com/, one from right-clicking the thumbnail and one from right-clicking the full-size image, each taken with Copy Image Address . Send the page URL for an image result and you've filed the wrong thing. Brave applies this globally, subject to applicable local law. That's the part people get wrong, because Google's version of the same right is EU and UK only, so nobody has to be in Europe to file here. Brave weighs your role in public life, whether the information is factually inaccurate, whether it concerns someone under 18, whether it's sensitive data such as health or criminal offences, and whether the publisher was meeting a legal obligation, among other criteria it says are not an exhaustive list. Where it agrees to delist, Brave says the request can take up to 30 days to complete. None of this touches the page or any other search engine. A Brave delisting pulls the result out of Brave's index and leaves the page live at the same address, still on Google, still on Bing, still there for anyone holding the link. If 30 days pass with nothing, write back to the same address, because privacy@brave.com is Brave's data protection officer and there's no second queue behind it. In the EU you can route through Brave's nominated representative at brave@gdprnomrep.eu, though Brave says the same officer answers from privacy@brave.com either way, and an EU resident unhappy with the answer can complain to their local data protection authority. Outside the EU there's no Brave-run appeal , which is why the first email is worth drafting carefully. When a copy of your page is the one ranking That's the copyright lane, and only the copyright holder or an authorized agent may use it. Email dmca@brave.com with your first name, last name, email address and country or region; a Description of the work, with examples of the work attached if you have them; an Authorized Example of the copyrighted work , meaning a URL where Brave's team can verify the original; and the Location(s) of the infringement material , meaning the URLs you're asking Brave to remove. Filing as somebody's agent adds your company name and the copyright owner's full name. Then the four statements Brave requires in the notice : a good-faith belief that the use isn't authorized, an accuracy and authorization statement under penalty of perjury, an acknowledgment of liability under 17 U.S.C. 512(f) for knowingly misrepresenting material as infringing, and an acknowledgment that the submission may be provided to third parties or the public, including the alleged infringer . Sign it with your full name, matching the first and last names at the top exactly. Image results need the same two https://imgs.search.brave.com/ addresses. Weigh those last two statements before you send anything. The forwarding clause means this is not a quiet route, since the person you're filing against can be shown what you wrote. And 512(f) is not decoration, so a copyright notice pointed at content you don't own is a signed misrepresentation rather than a shortcut. Brave publishes no turnaround, no appeal and no counter-notice procedure for copyright. A rejected notice has no documented second step. Brave's public transparency report carries browser statistics, with no search-removal numbers anywhere in it, so there's no published grant rate to plan against on either lane. On this page Search Brave first, because your Google results don't apply Make sure Brave's crawler can reach the page Submit the URL for a re-fetch Clear out the dead URLs, and check the status code first Do the source work before you ask Brave to delist anything File the delisting request at privacy@brave.com When a copy of your page is the one ranking Written by Drew Chapin → Updated 2026-09-08 Rather not do this yourself? SEO and AI Optimization → Related guides Schema markup, and what it actually buys you → How to use Google's removal tools on a court record → Brave is a separate index, and separate work Doing all of this yourself is free and you should start today, because the re-fetch tool takes one URL and the delisting email takes one careful draft. What none of it does is make the page worth ranking. When you want the same pages earning positions across Google, Bing and Brave, and getting cited when somebody asks an AI instead of typing into a search box, our SEO and AI Optimization service covers the whole job, and we quote it against your situation rather than selling it at a list price. Have us do it. Everything above, filed for you, chased for you, and reported back. One flat fee. See the service → Every guide we publish is free and ungated. Browse all of them , see what we do and what it costs , or read why we built this company . Written by Drew Chapin , who ran all of this on his own name first. © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## How to remove a Reddit post or comment about you
URL: https://discoverability.co/guides/how-to-remove-a-reddit-post/

Home / Guides / Content removal: who published it decides what comes down News and articles How to remove a Reddit post or comment about you Reddit removes content that breaks one of its eight rules, plus copyright material under a separate policy, and there's no rule against being unfair to you. So your first move isn't a form, it's deciding which lane you're in, because the wrong lane sends you to a queue that was never going to help. Here's the route when a rule got broken, the route when the thread is just bad, and the Google step that moves it off your name. What you get: it depends who removes it Three different outcomes, and only one of them is deletion. Reddit's admins remove content that breaks the eight Reddit Rules, plus copyright material under a separate policy. Nothing else. The subreddit's own moderators can remove anything in their community under their own rules, which is the fastest lever on an ordinary bad thread. A mod can remove the words and the poster can delete them, and either way the URL survives . Google is a separate step on top of all three. What you hand over: links, and sometimes your address For a rules report, an email address and links. Reddit's form for people without an account takes your email, the username you're reporting, full https:// links, a violation category and two checkboxes. No ID, no fee, no lawyer. Screenshots get refused outright. The copyright route costs more : a DMCA notice takes your full legal name, street address, signature and two required statements, one of them under penalty of perjury, and Reddit may pass your name and email address to the person you reported. What stops it: reporting it under the wrong rule Reporting a critical thread as harassment. Reddit's harassment policy says in writing that it's designed to protect people from targeted personal abuse, not to shield ideas, beliefs, organizations, or public figures from criticism, even if it's harsh. That report gets denied. The privacy rule has the same door in it: Reddit says public figures can be an exception, such as posting professional links to contact a congressman or the CEO of a company, so your business contact details probably aren't a violation . Check the post against the eight Reddit Rules first Open the Reddit Rules and read your post or comment against them. The four that catch most of what lands on us are Rule 1 (harassment, bullying, threats of violence), Rule 3 (someone's personal or confidential information, and intimate media shared without consent), Rule 5 (impersonating a person or entity in a deceptive manner) and Rule 7 (illegal content) . If one of those actually fits, Reddit's own safety team has a route for you. There is no defamation rule, no false-review rule and no rule against a thread being unfair to your business. The list is eight rules long and none of them covers a post that's harsh, one-sided or simply wrong about you. If that's what you're looking at, every report form below is a dead end and the moderators are your move. Copy the exact link before you go anywhere else. Use the Share button directly below the post or comment and select copy link , because a report needs the address of the specific comment rather than the thread it's buried in. Reddit wants the full URL beginning with https://www.reddit.com, and if the thread was crossposted or reposted somewhere else, each copy is its own URL and its own request . Report it to Reddit if it breaks one of them With a Reddit account, report it from the post itself. Reddit's instruction is to tap or click the overflow menu, then select Report , and pick the rule that fits. Reddit points account holders to reddit.com/report for the same thing and says that's the way to get an issue handled quickly, but it's no use to you signed out. Without an account, use Reddit's Other reports form , which opens with Report Reddit Rules Violation already chosen. Required: Your email address , Reddit username you are reporting with no u/ in front of it, a Policy Violation category, Additional Reddit link(s) to where this activity happened (no screenshots): , both checkboxes, and Subject of inquiry plus Details of inquiry. Your Reddit username(optional) and Attachments(optional) are the only two you can skip. Paste links, never pictures. Reddit says flatly that it doesn't accept screenshots, because they're too easy to manipulate, so a report built on images is a report that closes. Reddit also warns on that same form that responses using this method may be delayed, and it publishes no turnaround for any report at all: its own language is that it acts in a timely manner. File once and go do the next thing on this page. Message the subreddit's moderators, which is the real lever Moderators can remove anything in their own community under their own community's rules, and they don't need Reddit's permission. Reddit says mods perform the majority of community moderation actions across the platform. On a thread that breaks no sitewide rule, this is the only fast route that exists . Reddit's own instructions : on reddit.com, click Message the mods under the moderators section in the sidebar of the community. On iOS and Android, go to the community, tap the overflow menu at the top right, then tap Message moderators . Don't chat an individual mod instead, because Reddit says modmail is the channel and replies come back in your chat inbox labeled MOD. Write it as a community-rules problem, not a legal threat. Name the rule of theirs you think it breaks, link the exact comment, say what you want in one line, and keep it short. Reddit warns that in a large community it can take a while for mods to get back to you. If they say no, reporting the same thread to Reddit's admins won't overturn it when no sitewide rule is broken, and a crosspost in another subreddit is a different set of mods and a separate message . Ask the poster to delete it, and know what a delete leaves behind A mod removal hides the words behind [removed] and an author deletion hides them behind [deleted], so when the mods won't act, the poster is the only route left. Nobody at Reddit will delete a rule-compliant post, so if you want the text gone rather than hidden, the poster is the whole ask. Keep the message short and human and don't open with a legal threat , which on Reddit tends to buy you a screenshot of your own message. A delete doesn't kill the URL. Reddit's own words : when you delete a post, the link to the post will still exist, but the post itself is deleted, and the post is only accessible with a direct link and will not appear in Reddit search. That's exactly why a page you were told was gone can still be sitting in Google under its old title. Deleting the account does even less than that. Reddit states that any posts or comments made from a deleted account stay on Reddit, but people can't see who they came from. So if the poster offers to nuke their account instead, the thread survives with the byline stripped off it . Ask them to delete the post and the comments first, which is what Reddit tells its own users they have to do before deleting an account. If they used your photo or your writing, file a copyright notice This is the one route with teeth that doesn't need a rule break. If the post reproduces a photo you took or text you wrote, it's a copyright complaint, and Reddit says that on a valid takedown notice it will remove the violative content, notify the user who posted it, and confirm with the reporter that it removed the content. File it on Reddit's Intellectual property requests form with Copyright Infringement / DMCA selected. It costs you your address. The form requires the copyright owner's full name, street address, city, state or province, postal code and country, what your copyrighted work is and its title, the exact Reddit URL, two required statements, one a good-faith belief and one made under penalty of perjury, and an electronic signature typed as your full name. Reddit says it doesn't accept initials, nicknames, aliases or stage names, and that it may share basic information about your notice with the reported user, including your name and email address, on request . Don't fire this at a thread that only talks about you. Reddit lists facts, ideas, and short phrases such as names and titles among the things copyright generally doesn't protect, and gives a text post that describes a work without copying from it as an example of what isn't a violation. The poster can also counter-notify, which puts the whole thing back in front of Reddit with your name attached to it. Then do the Google step, because that's what moves the result If the post published your home address, phone number, email address or a government ID number, you have a Google route that doesn't need Reddit to do anything at all. Google's Remove my private info from Google Search page carries a Start removal request button. Expect a partial removal, which Google defines as the page not showing up for any search query that contains your name or identifier, though it might show up if someone searches for something else. That's suppression on your name, and it's usually the outcome that matters. Once the post is actually gone or visibly changed, tell Google. Open the Refresh Outdated Content tool , which you have to be logged in with a Google account to use and which does not require you to own the page. Enter the URL, click Submit , and if the page still resolves you'll be asked for 1 to 2 words that existed in the snippet of the search result but are no longer live. Your request lands in the request queue at the bottom of the tool, so check back there for the status. The order is the part people get wrong. Google states that if a page has not been removed or had significant changes, the request will fail, so filing it the day you sent your Reddit report burns the attempt. Load the URL yourself and confirm the content is down or different first , then file. If nothing comes down Stop refiling, because a denial on a rule-compliant thread isn't a filing mistake. Reddit warns on its copyright form that abuse of its reporting systems may result in delayed processing of your reports or the suspension of your ability to submit future reports, and it says the same about appeals: it may limit how many times a decision can be appealed and suspend processing for people who frequently submit unfounded or abusive appeals. No Reddit request form has a defamation option and there's nowhere to upload a court order , so a demand letter doesn't open a route the rules don't have. Find out what the page is actually ranking for before you spend a dollar on it. Search your name and your business name, note where the Reddit link sits and which query pulls it up, and check whether it's holding a top spot on your own name or turning up on some longer phrase nobody types. A thread that ranks on a mid-tail search can be cheaper to outrank than to remove , and you can't tell which one you're dealing with without looking. Be clear about what a Reddit removal never reaches. It doesn't touch a screenshot someone posted somewhere else, the same link quoted in another community, or a site that copied the thread, and each of those is its own owner and its own request. A page that won't come down can still be pushed off the first result for your name , and that's different work from anything on this page. On this page Check the post against the eight Reddit Rules first Report it to Reddit if it breaks one of them Message the subreddit's moderators, which is the real lever Ask the poster to delete it, and know what a delete leaves behind If they used your photo or your writing, file a copyright notice Then do the Google step, because that's what moves the result If nothing comes down Written by Drew Chapin → Updated 2026-09-08 Rather not do this yourself? Content Removal → Related guides How to make your home address unsearchable → How to use Google's removal tools on a court record → When the thread isn't coming down Send the report yourself if a rule was broken and message the mods either way, because both are free and you should do them today. When it's a rule-compliant thread that nobody will touch, Content Removal is $499 to $1,999 per case : we work out what the host site's own policy actually allows, file that route, chase the copies, and build and rank the pages that take its place on your name when the original won't move. Have us do it. Everything above, filed for you, chased for you, and reported back. One flat fee. See the service → Every guide we publish is free and ungated. Browse all of them , see what we do and what it costs , or read why we built this company . Written by Drew Chapin , who ran all of this on his own name first. © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## How to remove court records from Google
URL: https://discoverability.co/guides/how-to-remove-court-records-from-google/

Home / Guides / Court record removal: what actually comes down Guide How to remove court records from Google Start at the sites holding your case, not at Google. Google won't pull a page that's still live, so the search result only moves after the site that published it moves first. Work them one at a time, in the order below. Every request in this guide is free , every one is a separate form, and no site here is bound by another one's decision , so a win at one changes nothing at the next. What you actually get De-indexed, not deleted, and the four sites don't land in the same place. CourtListener blocks the page from search engines and it stays live at its URL, where anyone holding the link still reaches it. Justia is the same: blocked from search results, the page still live at its address. Trellis cuts off public and logged-out access and asks the engines not to index it, so a logged-out stranger holding the link doesn't get in. UniCourt redacts your name off its page. Full deletion takes a court order , and all four say so in writing. What you have to send For a de-index, the URLs and almost nothing else. CourtListener asks only for links to the pages: no ID, no docket number, no fee. Justia wants the links, a required comment, your name and your email. Trellis wants your name, your email, whether the record is about you, and a written reason. UniCourt is the exception : a long form, documentary proof, and it only takes requests from a party, a guardian or fiduciary of a party, or an attorney for one. What stops it Not having a sealing or expungement order is what kills most requests here. Without one, CourtListener, Justia and Trellis will de-index at most, and Google won't remove a live page on a court or aggregator site. UniCourt's grounds are narrower still, and simply not wanting to be online isn't one of them. A state privacy deletion demand also gets refused: Justia says public court records are exempt from the CCPA. First, write down every URL Search your exact case caption in quotation marks , then search your own name, and list every result that carries the case. That list is your work order. Every site is a separate request , so a removal from one changes nothing anywhere else. You'll be filling in each form yourself, from a browser. Several of these sites block automated submissions outright. Batch where the site allows it: CourtListener takes a list of links in one message , while Trellis and UniCourt want one submission per URL. CourtListener: the de-index request Go to CourtListener's removal contact form , pick Case Removal Request, and paste in the link to every page you want blocked . That's the whole requirement. Their removal policy says they'll generally block search engines from indexing those pages, and one request covers both the opinion page and the docket page attached to it . Send it yourself, from a browser. The form sits behind an anti-bot challenge, so nothing can submit it for you in bulk. It's also free, so don't pay anyone to send it for you . Don't wait on a date, because they don't publish one. The policy warns outright that search engines may not drop your case from their results for many months, if at all. Deletion is a separate ask: it takes a court order that specifically names Free Law Project , and an order aimed at the court clerk isn't enough. Trellis: click Request Redaction on the page itself Trellis's removal page reads as though a sealing order is mandatory. It isn't. Their own support page says the order is optional and that they redact names and limit access to logged-out users as a courtesy . Get there the right way or the form breaks. Find your case in the search on trellis.law, open the docket page, and click the Request Redaction link at the bottom right of that page . Trellis won't process a request sent by email , so that button is the only way in. It asks for your name, your email, whether the record is about you, and a written explanation of why you want it redacted . Once processed, Trellis removes public and logged-out access to the record and asks search engines not to index it. It's free, they say so themselves, and every separate Trellis URL needs its own submission . Justia: send the form, then check the result Open Justia's support portal and check the box for submitting a request to block a Justia link, such as a court docket or opinion, from search engines. Paste the URLs you want blocked , fill the required comments field, and give your name and email. No ID, no docket number, no court order. Then check the result yourself, because the confirmation isn't the outcome. Justia's block list for its docket site is a public file at dockets.justia.com/robots.txt. It ran to 94 blocked pages in October 2020, was emptied that same month, and carries none today . Search your case caption again 30 days after you send the request, and if the Justia page is still sitting in the results, send it again. Full removal is a different ask. Justia's own page says it won't fully remove items without a court order sealing the record or designating it for removal from the public record, and it points you at the court. Both routes are discretionary , with no service level and no appeal, and Justia states plainly that it has no control over how long the links take to come out of the search engines . UniCourt: the long form, and the one with a clock UniCourt's public records redaction request is free to submit, process and appeal. The gate is who you are: they only consider requests from a party to the record, a legal guardian or fiduciary of a party, or an attorney representing one , and an attorney has to give a bar number and bar state. Reputation firms aren't on that list. Have your details ready, because the form wants all of them: the exact UniCourt URL, your relationship to the record, full mailing address, phone, country and state of residence, email plus a confirmation, and whether a court has sealed or expunged the case. Then verify the email link within 14 days and pick the party name to redact , or the request stalls there. Your reason has to map to one of their four grounds : sealed or expunged by court order, increased risk of physical harm, identity theft, or a record concerning a minor. An unsupported assertion is not evidence, and that's where requests die , so attach the conformed order, the police report, or whatever documents your claim. They typically decide within 30 days, de-indexing generally takes about 30 more , and an appeal has to be filed within 30 days of the decision with new substance. Google, last, and only on a page that changed Wait until the site has actually changed the page. Google's Refresh Outdated Content tool won't remove a page that still exists and hasn't changed, and content still on the page is one of its listed denial reasons . You'll need to be signed in to a Google account to open it. Come back to it once a site has pulled the page or redacted your name off it. Don't burn time on the wrong form. Results about you covers your phone number, home address, email, Social Security, passport and driver's license numbers, not the content of a case , and Google says it won't remove contact details from government or educational sites or from newspapers. If you do hold an order, it goes through Google's legal removal process , and it has to be directed at the site publishing the page, not at Google , which doesn't accept service of process through its web forms. Each court-order submission needs every URL, the exact offending text at each one, and the section of the order that mandates removal. Google may display a link to a Lumen notice, which includes your court order , in place of the removed result. If nothing moves, and what this won't fix Put a date 30 days out and re-run the same searches, then run them again at 90 days. Work whatever's new, re-send to anyone who never answered, and keep the list , because a page you already cleared can come back. None of this seals or expunges the court's own record. The case file stays exactly where it is, and what changes is what a stranger typing your name into a search box finds . If you want the record itself sealed, that's a motion in the court that heard the case, and it's a different job from this one. Doing it yourself costs time rather than money. Every one of these requests is free , and the price is the running: a separate form per site, one submission per URL on two of them, a 14-day verification window you can miss, roughly 60 days before a UniCourt redaction clears search, and a list you have to keep chasing after that. On this page First, write down every URL CourtListener: the de-index request Trellis: click Request Redaction on the page itself Justia: send the form, then check the result UniCourt: the long form, and the one with a clock Google, last, and only on a page that changed If nothing moves, and what this won't fix Written by Drew Chapin → Updated 2026-09-08 Rather not do this yourself? Court Record Removal → Related guides How to remove your record from CourtListener → How to remove your record from UniCourt → How to use Google's removal tools on a court record → We'll work every form we're allowed to file. Court Record Removal is $199, one time. One fee covers every site we can reach , worked in the right order, plus twelve months of re-checking and re-submission on anything that comes back. UniCourt won't take a request from a reputation firm , so that one you sign and submit yourself, or it goes through your attorney of record. Have us do it. Everything above, filed for you, chased for you, and reported back. One flat fee. See the service → Every guide we publish is free and ungated. Browse all of them , see what we do and what it costs , or read why we built this company . Written by Drew Chapin , who ran all of this on his own name first. © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## How to remove DUI records from Google
URL: https://discoverability.co/guides/how-to-remove-dui-records-from-google/

Home / Guides / Court record removal: what actually comes down Guide How to remove DUI records from Google Get the certified court order first, because almost every route below asks for it before anyone will touch the page . Order certified copies from the clerk of courts in the county where the case was filed, and while that's pending, build the list of every URL carrying the case. Then it's one request per site, in order: the mugshot page, the background screening companies, the news story, and Google, which de-indexes rather than deletes . What you actually get With a certified order, Mugshots.com deletes the arrest page and charges nothing to do it . Without one, they only append your disposition, and the page, your name and the photo all stay up. Google never deletes anything: it drops the exact URLs you report out of its results and says the content may still exist on the web . What you have to send A certified court order of expungement, sealing, or record restriction, signed by a judge and sealed by the court. Mugshots.com wants your Mugshots.com ID in the same message. The copy you send has to be legible: non-legible documents are discarded and no notification is provided , so a bad scan costs you the whole wait and you never hear why. What stops it working A conviction. Mugshots.com removes only on expungement, seal, no information, record restriction, identity theft or death , so a guilty disposition comes back as an update instead of a removal, with the page and the photo still up. Ask a Pennsylvania defense attorney what order your disposition can actually get before you send anything, because without one, nothing downstream moves. Get the certified order first Nearly every route below opens with the same document, so get the order before you send a single request . You want a certified court order of expungement, sealing, or record restriction, signed by a judge and sealed by the court, and you get certified copies from the clerk of courts in the county where the case was filed. While you're there, write down the full docket number, the county, and the court , since every form asks for all three. In Pennsylvania, if your case ended in ARD, you don't petition for anything. Pa.R.Crim.P. 320 says the judge who dismisses the charges also shall order the expungement of the arrest record , and the Commonwealth gets 30 days after service of the dismissal motion to object. If you never saw an order, call the clerk and ask where it is. If your case is a conviction, the route is the official Rule 790 petition , filed with the Clerk of Courts in the county of the case, and a petition is a filing, not an outcome . Ask a Pennsylvania defense attorney what your disposition qualifies for before you pay a filing fee. The other door is Clean Slate limited access , and it seals rather than erases . Whether a DUI qualifies is an open question, so put that to the same attorney rather than assuming yours does. Once any order lands, the state portal drops the docket without being asked : the AOPC's own help document lists expunged, pending-expungement, sealed and limited-access cases among the docket sheets it won't return. That's one page you never have to chase. Build the URL list while you wait The list is the part you can do today , while the order is pending. Search your name, then your name with the county, then the docket number, and save the exact URL of every page carrying the case . Screenshot each one before you file anything. Google acts only on the URLs you submit, so a partial list produces a partial removal, and most sites want their own record ID attached to the request that names them. Sort the list into four piles as you build it, because each pile gets a different request: mugshot and arrest sites, background screening companies, news stories, and everything else . Check the second and third pages of results, and search in a private window. This list is the whole job. Everything after it is sending the same order to the addresses on it. Send the order to Mugshots.com Read Mugshots.com's record maintenance page before you write to anyone there, because the site states plainly that it doesn't charge for removing or updating arrest records . Send your request to the removal address published on that page, attach the court order, and include your Mugshots.com ID , which sits on the page carrying your arrest. Disposition updates go to a different address on the same page, so pick the right one before you hit send. The documentation has to be signed by a judge, sealed by the court, and legible . The site's policy says non-legible documents are discarded with no notification at all , so a scan a shade too dark disappears and you wait on a queue you never entered. Scan it flat, full size, and in good light. Then wait the window out before you chase anything. Requests are handled first come, first serve , the site allows up to 10 business days , and it guarantees no timeline. If the page is still up after that, resend the identical package with a cleaner scan instead of escalating, because a demand letter buys you nothing here . Dispute the background check copies A background screening company is a consumer reporting agency, and 15 U.S.C. § 1681i turns a written dispute into a free reinvestigation inside the 30-day period beginning on the date the agency receives your notice , after which it has to promptly delete or modify anything that can't stand. Section 1681e(b) already requires that company to follow reasonable procedures to assure maximum possible accuracy, so quote it and make them do it. Write each screening company its own letter with the court order, a copy of the report showing the item, and the exact line you're disputing , and send it so receipt is provable , because the clock runs from receipt and not from the date you typed at the top. Put the expiry date in your calendar the day you mail it, and follow up the day after it passes. Two limits, up front. Section 1681c caps records of arrest at seven years but carves out records of convictions of crimes, so a DUI conviction is reportable forever , and § 1681c(b) lifts the arrest cap entirely for jobs paying $75,000 or more. The CFPB advisory opinion behind this route was withdrawn effective May 12, 2025 , so don't build your letter on it. Cite the statute sections instead , which are untouched and still carry the deadline. File with Google only where its policy reaches Google runs one policy that can touch a mugshot page and one that can't, and filing under the wrong one costs you weeks . The exploitative removals policy states three criteria: you're the subject of the content, the site isn't a business review site, and the website requires payment to have the content removed . File the removal form against any site still charging a fee and attach screenshots of the fee demand itself. A site that has stopped charging doesn't meet that third criterion as Google writes it, so don't count on this form there . Don't file under the personal information removal policy . It covers addresses, phone numbers, government ID numbers, bank and card numbers, signatures, medical records, login credentials and doxxing content, and arrest records, mugshots and court records appear nowhere in it . Whatever Google grants, be clear on what you got. It removes the reported URL from its results and says the content may still exist on the web. That's a de-index, not a deletion, and it works one URL at a time, which is exactly why the list matters. Save Google's Refresh Outdated Content instructions for last, after a page has actually changed or come down , because that tool only reconciles the index with a page that already moved. When a page doesn't come down Resend once: same address, same order, cleaner scan. Wait out the published window before you do it: 10 business days at Mugshots.com, 30 days at a screening company , and no published turnaround at all from Google or from a Pennsylvania court on an expungement filing, so don't count days you were never promised. For a news story, ask, and expect a no. The documented programs are voluntary and out of state: the Boston Globe's Fresh Start sends requests to a newsroom committee that meets monthly and can update the story or de-index it, and cleveland.com runs an equivalent. Ask your own paper what its policy is instead of assuming it has one, keep the note short and factual, and attach the order. Judyrecords publishes no opt-out page, no privacy page and no removal policy anywhere in its terms . When a site publishes no route, stop writing to it and put the hours into the copies that answer . What this doesn't fix, and what it costs you alone Removing an aggregator copy doesn't seal, expunge or alter the court's own record. In Pennsylvania it doesn't clean your driving record either: the state supreme court upheld a license suspension in July 2025 that counted an expunged ARD as the prior offense, and that opinion says PennDOT has to keep an ARD acceptance for ten years . Copies already taken stay taken , so the URL list, not the court order, is the part of this that never finishes. Re-run your searches after every removal lands, and add anything new to the list. Every request in this guide is free to send. What you actually pay is the county's filing fee on a petition, whatever processing fees that county adds, and certified copies of the order. The rest of the price is your time: you inventory every URL one at a time, write each request to that site's published policy, wait out each site's window, then go back and check, because the same case can come back under a new URL . One round of filing was never the job. On this page Get the certified order first Build the URL list while you wait Send the order to Mugshots.com Dispute the background check copies File with Google only where its policy reaches When a page doesn't come down What this doesn't fix, and what it costs you alone Written by Drew Chapin → Updated 2026-09-08 Rather not do this yourself? Court Record Removal → Related guides How to remove arrest records from Google → Why your expunged record is still showing online → You hold the order. We'll chase the copies. Get the order, then hand us the list. Court Record Removal is $199, one time , and we file every request, chase the copies that come back, and keep re-submitting for twelve months so a page that reappears gets caught. Have us do it. Everything above, filed for you, chased for you, and reported back. One flat fee. See the service → Every guide we publish is free and ungated. Browse all of them , see what we do and what it costs , or read why we built this company . Written by Drew Chapin , who ran all of this on his own name first. © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## How to remove your info from Instant Checkmate
URL: https://discoverability.co/guides/how-to-remove-your-info-from-instant-checkmate/

Home / Guides / Personal information removal: a dozen sites, a dozen forms, and they repost Guide How to remove your info from Instant Checkmate Instant Checkmate's suppression tool is free, and one pass covers TruthFinder, Intelius and USSearch too. It suppresses your report, it doesn't delete your data , and it only stops searches by name. The step that strands people sits at the end: you have to verify an email or phone number that's already sitting in the file they built on you. Here's the order to do it in, and the two forms suppression doesn't cover. Suppressed, not deleted A finished request stops your Background Report being handed out when someone searches your name on Instant Checkmate, TruthFinder, Intelius and USSearch. Nothing gets deleted. Their own text warns that your information may still appear in phone, address or email reports when someone searches by those instead, and that registered sex offender list entries are carved out . No ID upload, but they want a phone There's no government ID, no photo and no notarization anywhere in this. They ask for your full name, your date of birth, and a working email. Then the real cost: the Terms of Use require you to verify at least one email address or phone number , and using the tool consents you to emails and texts from them. You hand a data broker a live phone number to get out of its files. It stalls on the number you gave up The contact point you verify has to be one already listed in the report they hold on you . If that report was built from an old address with a dead landline and an abandoned email, there's no self-service route at all and you're emailing privacy@instantcheckmate.com to get a person to match it by hand. PeopleConnect names failed identity verification as a reason it turns requests down. Go to the opt-out link, and ignore the one in the footer Open instantcheckmate.com/opt-out/ . It hands you straight off to the PeopleConnect Suppression Center , which is where the work actually happens, and that second link is the one Instant Checkmate's own privacy center points at. Both land in the same place , so use whichever one you already have open. Do not use the footer link that reads Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information. It's a dead anchor that opens a cookie preferences box about targeted ads. It doesn't touch your report, it doesn't touch your address, and it doesn't touch your relatives' names. If that's the button you clicked last week, you have not opted out of anything and you're starting from zero today. One exception before you start. If you're an active or retired judge, a law enforcement officer, a public official or another person your state protects by statute, skip the tool and email privacy@instantcheckmate.com with your name, date of birth, city and state, phone, email, the law you're invoking, and your protected status. Enter your email, then open the verification message Step 1 is one email field and one checkbox . The checkbox covers the Terms of Use, the Privacy Policy, and consent to transactional email, and it's required. Their instruction on the page: "Upon submission of your email address you will receive a verification email with a link to proceed." Use an address you can open right now, on the device in front of you. Everything past this point is locked behind that message, so a work address you can't reach until Monday costs you the weekend. Click the link in the email and you're inside the portal. Match yourself to the report they already hold They ask for your full name and your date of birth , and they say why: many people share names, so the birth date is what separates you from the other person with your name. Then the part that decides whether this works. You have to prove you still control an email address or phone number that is already printed in that Background Report . Their words: "If you can verify that you still have access to one of the emails or phone numbers listed in the Background Report, we will be able to confirm the report is a match." The Terms of Use restate it as a hard requirement, not a convenience. So work out which of your old emails and phone numbers you can still get into before you start , because the portal will ask you to verify one of them. If every contact point on that report is dead, stop trying to force the form and email privacy@instantcheckmate.com instead. Manual matching by their support team is the only door left, and it's slower. If you were going to hand this to a paid service, know what their contract says. The Suppression Tool is for personal use and is contractually barred from commercial use , so a vendor filing as you is the fast route to a denial. The legitimate path is the authorized agent one, which needs signed written authorization or a power of attorney plus a real email you've actually used with the site. Masked and generated addresses can't be processed , and they say so. Turn the rule on for every site, more than this one One pass here covers the whole people search family. Instant Checkmate, TruthFinder, Intelius and USSearch are all suppressed by the same request , so you don't file four times and you don't need four accounts. That's the best thing about this tool and it's the reason to do it properly once. It's presented as suppression rules , plural, rather than a single switch, so check that every site in the list is actually toggled on before you close the tab . Take a screenshot of the finished state while you're there. Classmates.com is excluded, in writing. It's in the PeopleConnect family and it is not covered by this tool, so it needs its own separate opt-out on its own site. The brand list also ends with the phrase "as well as additional affiliated websites" and never names them, which means nobody can confirm from their documentation that coverage is complete . File the relative and associate form the same day Suppressing your own report does not stop your name showing up inside other people's reports as a possible relative or associate. That's how a search for your brother still puts your name on the screen. It's a separate submission and it's the one people skip. Go to Instant Checkmate's privacy center and find Right to Opt Out. Under the cookie controls there's a form that takes first name, middle initial, last name, date of birth, city, state and email . Fill all of it and submit. They say you'll get an email once the request has been processed, and that's the whole confirmation. If you've ever searched or had an account, delete your user data too This is the third separate process, and it applies to anyone who has ever searched on the site or made an account, more than people who paid for something. Right to Delete on that same privacy center page removes your email address, your search history and your payment records , which is the data they collected from you rather than about you. Read their warning before you click it: deleting your User Data will not stop other people searching your public data , and it is not a substitute for the suppression request. It also closes your account and cancels every subscription on it , and they retain some information anyway to fight fraud, enforce billing agreements, serve as evidence in legal matters, and sit in system backups. Nobody publishes a turnaround, so set your own check date There is no stated timeline for suppression anywhere on their properties. Not in the Suppression Center, not in the privacy center, not in the Terms of Use. Any guide quoting you 24 hours or seven days for this made it up. Put a date in your calendar instead, and check by searching your name in a logged out browser or a private window. Do not log back in to search yourself. Their policy is that if you use or access the site again they may treat it as a new account and collect personal information associated with it. Checking your work from inside your own account is how you hand them fresh data. Re-check quarterly. Their own text concedes that subtle discrepancies and inaccuracies in the data can make it hard to remove everything , and reports are compiled in real time from sources that keep updating, so a record filed under a middle initial, an old married name or a misspelling can sit outside the rule you set. They invite the follow up: if public data about you shows up after suppression, mail privacy@instantcheckmate.com. Two honest limits to hold onto. None of this reaches the public records underneath , so the same information stays buyable and gets recompiled by other sites that never heard about your request. And the tool itself is discretionary and revocable : it's offered at their discretion, provided "AS IS" and "AS AVAILABLE", and they reserve the right to restrict it or withdraw it. A suppression that holds today carries no promise about next year. On this page Go to the opt-out link, and ignore the one in the footer Enter your email, then open the verification message Match yourself to the report they already hold Turn the rule on for every site, more than this one File the relative and associate form the same day If you've ever searched or had an account, delete your user data too Nobody publishes a turnaround, so set your own check date Written by Drew Chapin → Updated 2026-09-08 Rather not do this yourself? Personal Information Removal → Related guides How to remove your info from TruthFinder: the form moved, and one request covers four sites → How to remove your info from Intelius → Instant Checkmate is one of the sites carrying your address Send the Instant Checkmate request yourself and pay nobody. When your home address and your relatives' names are sitting on the other broker sites too, Personal Information Removal is $399, one time . We work every site we can reach against its own written policy, file the separate relative and associate forms, and keep re-submitting for twelve months , because these sites repost. Have us do it. Everything above, filed for you, chased for you, and reported back. One flat fee. See the service → Every guide we publish is free and ungated. Browse all of them , see what we do and what it costs , or read why we built this company . Written by Drew Chapin , who ran all of this on his own name first. © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## How to remove your info from Intelius
URL: https://discoverability.co/guides/how-to-remove-your-info-from-intelius/

Home / Guides / Personal information removal: a dozen sites, a dozen forms, and they repost Guide How to remove your info from Intelius Intelius doesn't run its own opt-out. The form at intelius.com/opt-out sends you to the PeopleConnect Suppression Center, and one pass there hides you on Intelius, TruthFinder, Instant Checkmate and US Search at once. It's free. It's also a suppression rather than a deletion, and it asks you for more personal detail than the listing already showed. Here's the procedure, in order, and the one thing that stops it working. Suppressed, not deleted The toggle hides your Background Report from a name search on Intelius, TruthFinder, Instant Checkmate and US Search. The record itself stays. PeopleConnect's own page says suppression does not affect whether the information will be available from other sources, including the third-party sources . Every record defaults to Displayed until you change it. No ID, but your birthdate is permanent There's no license upload, no selfie, no notarization. What it takes instead is your email, your full legal name plus any previous or informal names, every current and prior address, and every phone number and email you've used. Then your date of birth, which is mandatory and can never be edited once you save it . The verification trap To suppress a record you have to prove you control a phone number or email that already appears in that record . If it's built on a number you gave up years ago, the code never reaches you, the match lands in Unverified Matches , and you're into a manual email queue with no timeline attached. Go straight to the Suppression Center The removal form isn't on Intelius. Intelius.com/opt-out redirects to the PeopleConnect Suppression Center , so go there directly and skip the hop . The address bar will read suppression.peopleconnect.us and the branding stops saying Intelius, which is correct and not a sign you've been sent somewhere wrong. Open it in a normal browser window, because the whole domain sits behind a bot challenge and anything scripted gets a block page instead of the form. One pass here covers four sites. PeopleConnect states the tool manages your Background Report on all people search sites in the PeopleConnect family including TruthFinder.com, InstantCheckmate.com, Intelius.com and USSearch.com . So you don't file this four times, and if you already did one of the other three, Intelius is already done . Search your own name on all four afterward anyway. Step 1: your email address, then the link The first screen has three things on it : an email field, a checkbox reading "I agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy, and consent to receive transactional emails regarding my use of the Suppression Tool," and a Continue button. It asks for no name and no address yet. Use an email you actually read, tick the box, click Continue. You'll get back: "An email has been sent to the address you provided. Please click the link in the email to continue." There's no password and no account to create. The link in that email is what logs you in. It's single use and it expires, and requesting a second link kills the first, so if the mail is slow, wait instead of hitting Continue again . An older link returns "This link is no longer valid. Please request a new link and be sure to use the most recent one," and you're starting the step over. Step 2: the Identity page, and the birthdate you can't undo The link lands you on the Identity page, and this is the expensive part. It wants your current legal name plus any previous legal or informal names you use , all current and previous residence addresses, all emails that you use or have used in the past , and all phone numbers past and present. Write that list out before you start. Maiden name, the apartment before this one, the old work email, the cell number you dropped two carriers ago. Then date of birth, and it's mandatory. You have to tick "I have verified that the birthdate entered above is correct, and understand that this cannot be changed once saved." Read the date twice before you save it, because a typo here isn't fixable in the tool and drops you into customer support to unpick it. You're handing a data broker your exact birthdate and every name and address you've held, to hide what it already published about you. There's no way around that: the tool's own floor is "You must include your date of birth and name to see any results." Leave the field empty and there's nothing to suppress. Step 3: verify a phone or email that's already in the report Before anything can be suppressed you have to prove you control at least one contact point that already appears in the report on you , and the verification controls don't exist until you save. While you're still filling the form, the page's own instruction reads "Once you've entered the information, select 'Save' at the top or bottom of the page, and visit the Suppression Setting page to see your results." So click Save at the top or the bottom of the Identity page first . The page then redraws as a saved view, each entry badged Verified or Unverified with a Begin Verification button beside it. Click that, pick a phone number or an email address from what you entered, and you'll get a text with a unique code at standard message rates, or the same by email, to type back in. Pick the contact point you're surest of. A phone number and an email address both satisfy it , so if the only number in the report is dead, try an email you still hold before you give up on this route. This is a second, separate loop from the login link , so getting the magic link doesn't count as verifying anything. Once the code clears, that entry shows as Verified, and you move on to the Suppression Setting page. Step 4: switch every record to Suppressed Go to the Suppression Setting page. It runs "Searching for reports that match your verified data..." and splits what it finds into Verified Matches and Unverified Matches . The verified ones are the ones you can act on right now. It's a toggle per record, not one delete button, and records default to Displayed . The instruction on the page reads: "To control the visibility of a verified Background Report (1) select Displayed or Suppressed, and (2) select Save." Do that for every record in the list, one at a time , pressing Save each time. A record you scrolled past stays live. Coverage is bounded by what you typed on the last screen. PeopleConnect's rule is that only results matching the information you provide will be displayed , so a record filed under a maiden name or an address you forgot is neither shown to you nor suppressed. Incomplete recall is incomplete suppression, and the tool won't tell you. If something's missing, go back to Identity, add the name or address, and run the search again. If your match lands in Unverified Matches This is the failure the tool has a whole bucket for. When the record is built on a phone number you gave up or an address you left, no code can reach you, so you can't self-verify it . The route out is manual: email privacy@peopleconnect.us with the subject line Unverified match suppression request . There's no ticket number and no stated response time on that queue. Two faster routes exist when they apply. Washington residents with a Washington area code cell phone can call (888) 245-1655 to have that number checked and removed, and the policy says to tell the agent that's specifically what you're doing. Judges, law enforcement officers, public officials and others covered by a state address confidentiality law get a separate and stronger route at privacy@peopleconnect.us, which wants the law you're citing, proof of your status, and the record itself. Don't spend a day on the wrong lever. The Intelius privacy policy says the state privacy rights it lists, California's included, do not apply to this Publicly Available Information and Public Data , and that the company has voluntarily elected to offer suppression anyway. Intelius also states it isn't a consumer reporting agency under the FCRA . So there's no statutory demand to make over a Background Report and no dispute process to file. Check it again, and know what it never covered Nobody can give you a date. There's no timeline in the tool, no confirmation window, no ticket and no service level anywhere in PeopleConnect's material, so there's nothing to chase. Any guide quoting you a turnaround for Intelius invented it. What you control is the toggle, which you set and save yourself, so search your name on all four sites the next day, and again a week later . Suppression covers a name search and nothing else. PeopleConnect writes that your information may continue to appear in connection with certain features, for example, in phone, address or email reports that are accessible when someone searched by those criteria, or on registered sex offender lists . A reverse phone or reverse address lookup can still surface you. Classmates.com is explicitly excluded from the tool and needs its own visit. It never reaches the source, either, and that's why these listings come back. The same page states that suppressing your report does not affect whether the information will be available from other sources, including the third-party sources of the information , so the upstream vendors keep selling the same records. A new listing keyed to a new address or a new phone number falls outside the identity you built , and the tool matches on that identity. Go back in, add the new detail, re-suppress, and put a quarterly reminder on it. On this page Go straight to the Suppression Center Step 1: your email address, then the link Step 2: the Identity page, and the birthdate you can't undo Step 3: verify a phone or email that's already in the report Step 4: switch every record to Suppressed If your match lands in Unverified Matches Check it again, and know what it never covered Written by Drew Chapin → Updated 2026-09-08 Rather not do this yourself? Personal Information Removal → Related guides How to remove your info from Whitepages → The rest of the network still has your address One pass clears four PeopleConnect sites. It doesn't touch Whitepages, Spokeo, BeenVerified, PeopleFinders or the rest of the network, and each of those runs its own form, its own proof rules and its own way of failing quietly. Personal Information Removal is $399, one time : we file across the broker network for you, then watch for twelve months and re-file every listing that comes back. Have us do it. Everything above, filed for you, chased for you, and reported back. One flat fee. See the service → Every guide we publish is free and ungated. Browse all of them , see what we do and what it costs , or read why we built this company . Written by Drew Chapin , who ran all of this on his own name first. © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## How to remove your info from MyLife: one form, and a State dropdown that decides how hard it is
URL: https://discoverability.co/guides/how-to-remove-your-info-from-mylife/

Home / Guides / Personal information removal: a dozen sites, a dozen forms, and they repost Guide How to remove your info from MyLife: one form, and a State dropdown that decides how hard it is Go to mylife.com/privacyrequest . Not mylife.com/privacy, which is a sales page for a paid product. The opt-out is one free form and it asks for your name, your full street address, your birth year, and your state. Set the state first , because that one dropdown rewrites the rest of the form. MyLife says it processes a request within 15 business days, and what you get back is suppression, not deletion. What you actually get The form promises that a matching listing will be permanently removed . The privacy policy says something narrower. Opt-out rights, it explains, let MyLife keep your information for "suppression" purposes , and it argues deletion rights reach only data collected "from" consumers, which it says covers little of its database. It also warns that portions of a profile can stay in backup systems. What you have to hand over No ID document, no phone code, no account. The form's own text says you don't need to create an account to exercise your opt-out rights. What it does take is your full name, your complete street address , your birth year, your state and a reCAPTCHA, which is more identifying detail than some profiles carry. Outside California it also requires a working email address and a verification step you have to clear. What stops it working Name, address and birth year is thin matching data. A common name or an address you moved out of years ago gets you a we could not locate your record answer, and nothing tells you that is what happened. The two fields marked optional are what prevent it: your maiden or alias name, and the URL of your own profile page . Fill both. Open the opt-out form, not the privacy page The opt-out lives at mylife.com/privacyrequest , and the page title is literally MyLife Opt-Out Form. mylife.com/privacy is a different page and it is not an opt-out , it sells MyLife's paid reputation product. On the site itself the only route in is the Do Not Sell My Personal Information link in the footer. You can't Google your way there. The opt-out page carries a noindex tag , which tells search engines to keep it out of results, so type the address in rather than searching for it. The page is a shell around an embedded form. If it comes up blank, load the form on its own at mylife.jotform.com/260284407610047 . It's the same form, it works standalone, and it loads when the MyLife page won't. Find your profile and copy its URL first The form has a field for the URL of your listing, with the prompt Find your profile listing on MyLife.com. Search your own name on MyLife before you open the form and copy the address of every page that is yours. It's the strongest single thing you can hand them for matching, and it's the reason that field being marked optional is misleading. Don't buy anything while you're in there. Searching yourself is what triggers MyLife's reputation score pitch and its who is searching for you prompts. You don't need a subscription, an account or a paid report to file the opt-out, and paying doesn't move it any faster. One request covers the whole site. The phone search, the reverse address lookup and the people search all run on the same database, so you don't file separately for each one. Set the State dropdown before you type anything else State is the first field and it controls the rest of the form. Set it, then work down. Name, first and last. Location, which is a full street address with city, state and zip. Birth Year in YYYY, which the form says it uses to locate your correct profile. Then the fields marked optional, and treat all three as required: Middle Initial, Maiden Name or Alias Name, and the profile URL you copied. Nothing here gets checked against a document, so how much you give them is the only thing standing between you and a no-match answer. Know what else submitting does. The form says it will unsubscribe the email address you give it and delete any accounts registered with that email, so if you're a paying member that's your account. Canceling billing is a separate job with Customer Care and this form is not it. Then clear the Please verify that you are human check and submit. Outside California, you need a working email address Set the state to California and an optional Email field appears, next to the California opt-out rights text. Set it to anything else and that field disappears while a required Email Validator widget takes its place . We drove the dropdown through California, Texas, Pennsylvania and Florida in a browser on September 8, 2026 and watched the fields swap each time. So everyone outside California has to supply an email address and clear its verification round trip before the form will submit . There's no anonymous path and no postal equivalent inside the web form. Use an address you can open today, not one you check twice a year. If the form won't go through at all, the fallbacks are printed on it : email privacy@MyLife.com, or write to MyLife.com, Inc., Attn: Privacy, 907 Westwood Blvd. (#359), Los Angeles, CA 90024-2905. The privacy policy and the help pages give a different address, membersupport@mylife.com. Put both on the same email instead of guessing which one someone reads. Mark 15 business days, then check it yourself The form says it will process your request within 15 business days. That's the number shown to you at the moment you submit, so it's the one to hold them to. Put the date in your calendar and search your name again when it arrives, rather than waiting on a confirmation that may never come. Your time cost is one sitting. Searching yourself, copying the URL and filling the form is a single session at a desk. Everything after that is checking, and checking is the part people skip. If the listing is still up, the appeal is written into the privacy policy : email membersupport@mylife.com. MyLife commits to tell you in writing what it did or didn't do within sixty days of receiving an appeal . If that goes nowhere and you live in a state with a privacy law, the next move is a complaint to your state attorney general, not a fourth email. If they turn you down over where you live Removal here isn't owed everywhere. The form offers these options to residents of the states it lists and, in its words, at our discretion to residents of other states as well. A refusal based on your state is a real outcome, and nothing warns you at submission time, because the dropdown carries all fifty. MyLife's two lists disagree, and the longer one is in the policy. The form names California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Iowa, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Oregon, Texas, Utah and Virginia. The privacy policy adds Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Minnesota, Rhode Island and Tennessee. If you're in one of those six, quote the policy back at them . The policy also reserves two things the form never asked us for: a piece of identification to verify you, and a reasonable fee to comply with your request. Neither is part of the standard path. If either turns up in a reply, it's an escalation rather than the rule, and it's worth pushing back before you comply. What this does not do Getting off MyLife doesn't touch the sites that feed MyLife. The policy says it may receive or license personal information from third parties, such as data brokers, to enhance records it already holds. Those suppliers aren't named, they keep their copies, and the same address and relative names stay for sale elsewhere. Suppression is a list, not an erasure. The policy describes opt-out rights as letting MyLife hold your information to stop future sale, and nowhere does it say that list gets checked against data it licenses later. That's the gap a profile comes back through, so search your name again in a few months and be ready to file a second time. If you were removed from MyLife two years ago, don't assume you still are. Search the name, open the page, and find out what's live today. A removal you haven't seen with your own eyes is not one you can report to anybody. On this page Open the opt-out form, not the privacy page Find your profile and copy its URL first Set the State dropdown before you type anything else Outside California, you need a working email address Mark 15 business days, then check it yourself If they turn you down over where you live What this does not do Written by Drew Chapin → Updated 2026-09-08 Rather not do this yourself? Personal Information Removal → Related guides How to remove your info from Whitepages → How to remove your info from Intelius → MyLife is one site, and it bought your address from somebody File the MyLife form yourself, it's free and it's one sitting. Personal information removal is $399, one time , and it covers the whole broker network we can reach plus twelve months of monitoring and re-filing, because these sites buy the data again and put the profile back up. Have us do it. Everything above, filed for you, chased for you, and reported back. One flat fee. See the service → Every guide we publish is free and ungated. Browse all of them , see what we do and what it costs , or read why we built this company . Written by Drew Chapin , who ran all of this on his own name first. © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## How to remove your info from PeopleFinders
URL: https://discoverability.co/guides/how-to-remove-your-info-from-peoplefinders/

Home / Guides / Personal information removal: a dozen sites, a dozen forms, and they repost Guide How to remove your info from PeopleFinders PeopleFinders won't remove anything from the form you land on. That page only collects your name and email, then mails you a link to the real removal form, and that link expires in 24 hours . Miss it and you start over at the CAPTCHA. Here's the whole sequence in order, the phone number PeopleFinders offers alongside the web form, and the one silent failure that leaves your listing up while you think it's gone. Hidden on their site, not deleted A completed request takes your listing off peoplefinders.com. It does not delete the underlying data , and their own FAQ says removal from the site "does not eliminate it from its primary sources." Deletion is a separate request and nobody got one granted in full last year : of 2,847 Right to Delete requests in 2025, zero were complied with in whole . No ID, but they want your email No government ID, no document upload, no text-message code, at any point. What they require is a working email address, because the real removal form only reaches you through a link they send there . Then your name, street address, city and state, plus a phone number and date of birth they push you to add. PeopleFinders lists calling (877) 551-9688 as an equal opt-out method alongside the web form , though we have not confirmed whether the operator completes the request on the call or emails you the same link. It fails silently The dangerous failure here isn't a rejection. It's a match that never happens . Their FAQ says it outright: "If our system cannot match the provided information to a record, the information will not be removed." No error, no notice, no rejection email. You get a confirmation that the request arrived and the listing simply stays up, so check it yourself on day three . Open the opt-out page and ignore Free Identity Monitoring Go to peoplefinders.com/opt-out . The page is headed Do Not Sell My Personal Information and it stacks two options inside one card: Right to Opt-out on top, an OR divider, then Free Identity Monitoring underneath, and the page tells you "Both options are completely FREE." Only the top one removes anything. Free Identity Monitoring signs you up for an account, which creates a customer record instead of taking yours down. Click the green Next button under Right to Opt-out. Your address bar won't change, so you're still on /opt-out and that's correct . There is also a phone route: call (877) 551-9688 . PeopleFinders lists that number as an equal opt-out method alongside the web form in its Do Not Sell notice , but we have not confirmed whether the operator completes the request on the call or emails you the same link . Stage one takes your name and gives you nothing First Name and Last Name are required, Middle Name is optional, and the email address you type here is where the actual removal form gets sent , so use one you can open right now. Under "I am:" choose The subject of the request unless you're filing for someone else, then tick the authorization box underneath it. Now solve the CAPTCHA. It's reCAPTCHA Enterprise with image challenges , not a one-click box, and the whole domain sits behind bot protection, so a script or a removal browser extension can't do this part for you . Click Send Request. Nothing has been removed at this point. All you've done is ask them to mail you the form. The emailed link dies in 24 hours Watch for the email and open it fast. PeopleFinders' instruction is exact: "If you wait more than 24 hours to click this link you will need to request a new one." They also warn it "may take some time to arrive," so check your spam folder before you decide it never came. Miss the window and you go back to the CAPTCHA and start the whole thing again. The link opens the Record Suppression Form . That form is the request. Everything before it was the request for the request , which is why a guide describing one single PeopleFinders form is describing a page that isn't there anymore. Fill the suppression form once, because you can't edit it First Name, Last Name, Street Address, City and State are the enforced fields. Email, phone and date of birth carry no asterisk, so the form will submit without them. Fill them in anyway. PeopleFinders warns that omitting information "will only hinder the opt-out process," and a thin submission is the one that quietly matches nothing. Strip the punctuation out of your name. Their instruction is specific: "Please omit any special characters, such as periods and hyphens. (ex: for the name James Brown, Jr. please put “Brown Jr” in the last name section)". A period in a suffix or a hyphen in a surname can break the match, and a broken match looks exactly like a successful submission . Read every field back before you tick the certification box, because the warning above it means what it says: "You will not be able to modify the information once you click submit." A typo costs you the entire email loop over again. Then click Submit. You'll get a confirmation page and a confirmation email, and that email confirms they received the request, never that anything came down . Check on day three with your cache cleared PeopleFinders states the window plainly: "Please allow 3 days for your record to be fully removed from our site." On day three, clear your browser cache first , then search your own name on peoplefinders.com. Their FAQ tells you to do it in exactly that order, which tells you they expect a stale page to be handed back to you. If the listing is still up, run the whole submission again with more complete details . Their FAQ points at the reason: "If our system cannot match the provided information to a record, the information will not be removed." Nothing tells you that happened, so your check on day three is the only signal you're going to get . Two more jobs this opt-out doesn't do PeopleFinders LLC also runs findaneighborhood.com , and opting out of one doesn't visibly opt you out of the other. Its Do Not Sell notice carries the same (877) 551-9688 number and links to a separate opt-out form on its own domain . Treat that as a second submission you have to make, not a formality. If Google or Bing still show the old listing after the page is gone, PeopleFinders hands that back to you , saying they "are unable to influence the speed at which Google and Bing update their caches." They point you to Google's Refresh Outdated Content tool, which is the right tool and works for anyone. Their Bing link is worse : it opens a Bing Webmaster Tools sign-in built for site owners, checked September 8, 2026. It comes back, and you can be denied Put a reminder in your calendar to run this again. PeopleFinders says so themselves on the opt-out page: "we regularly receive new public records, so even if you opt out, your publicly available information may appear in our products again in the future. We recommend you periodically refresh your opt-out request." There's no standing suppression here , and an incomplete submission leaves records behind that can reattach to your name later. Denial is a real outcome and their published numbers say so: of 773,547 opt-out requests logged in 2025, 544,843 were denied , largely on the stated ground that the person "was determined to not be a covered consumer under an applicable consumer privacy law." If you're denied, appeal at the Privacy Rights Appeal Form or by calling the same number. Expect the appeal to ask for more than the opt-out did : the request type, the date you originally filed, the URL of the listing, your date of birth, and a required phone number, street address and ZIP . Know what you're appealing for, too. This is suppression from one website , and it doesn't reach the voter, property and phone-directory records underneath it. On this page Open the opt-out page and ignore Free Identity Monitoring Stage one takes your name and gives you nothing The emailed link dies in 24 hours Fill the suppression form once, because you can't edit it Check on day three with your cache cleared Two more jobs this opt-out doesn't do It comes back, and you can be denied Written by Drew Chapin → Updated 2026-09-08 Rather not do this yourself? Personal Information Removal → Related guides How to remove your info from Whitepages → PeopleFinders is one site, and it reposts File this one yourself if PeopleFinders is the only listing you found. When your address and your relatives' names are sitting across dozens of these sites, Personal Information Removal is $399 , we file across the whole broker network, and we re-file for twelve months as the listings come back. Have us do it. Everything above, filed for you, chased for you, and reported back. One flat fee. See the service → Every guide we publish is free and ungated. Browse all of them , see what we do and what it costs , or read why we built this company . Written by Drew Chapin , who ran all of this on his own name first. © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## How to remove your info from TruthFinder: the form moved, and one request covers four sites
URL: https://discoverability.co/guides/how-to-remove-your-info-from-truthfinder/

Home / Guides / Personal information removal: a dozen sites, a dozen forms, and they repost Guide How to remove your info from TruthFinder: the form moved, and one request covers four sites TruthFinder's own opt-out form is gone. The link on their site hands you off to PeopleConnect's Suppression Center, and that's where the removal actually happens now. It's free, and one request covers TruthFinder, Instant Checkmate, Intelius and US Search at once , so you don't file four. Open the form, verify the email they send you, then set your suppression rules. Here's every step in order, plus the three things that quietly undo it. Hidden, not deleted Suppression stops a Background Report from being returned when someone searches your name on TruthFinder, Instant Checkmate, Intelius and US Search. PeopleConnect still holds the data. Their own page says suppressing your report doesn't affect whether the information is available from the third-party sources it came from, so the county, the voter file and the supplier who sold it are all untouched. An email they already have No ID upload, no photo, no notarized letter, no mail step. You give an email address, click the link they send, then provide your full name, date of birth, and a phone or email you can verify. The catch is which one counts: TruthFinder matches you if you still have access to one of the emails or phone numbers listed in the report , so a brand new throwaway address may match nothing. Deleting your data deletes the block The suppression is a rule attached to an account you have to keep alive. PeopleConnect states it plainly: delete your user data and they must delete any and all suppressions associated with your user . Filing a privacy-law deletion against your own Suppression Center account is the fastest way to put yourself back in the index. Keep the account. Open the right form, and skip the footer link Go to the PeopleConnect Suppression Center . That's the exact address behind the Manage My Suppression Rules button on TruthFinder's Data Privacy Center , so you're not routing around anything. TruthFinder doesn't run its own opt-out form anymore. The old opt-out page just redirects to the Suppression Center login, and any walkthrough that has you picking your record off a TruthFinder listing page is describing a screen that no longer exists. Don't use the Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information link in TruthFinder's footer. It opens a cookie preferences box about advertising trackers and does nothing at all to your background report . It is an easy place to stop, believing the job is done. One thing to handle before you start: PeopleConnect's terms of use say you can't access the Suppression Tool from an IP address outside the United States without their written approval. If you run a VPN that exits abroad, turn it off first. Step 1: enter an email address you can open right now The first screen is one field . It reads Free - Start Here, Step 1, Enter your email address, and underneath: "Upon submission of your email address you will receive a verification email with a link to proceed." Nothing past this screen loads without that link , so use an inbox you can get into in the next few minutes, not one you check on a laptop at home. You have to tick the box that reads "I agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy, and consent to receive transactional emails regarding my use of the Suppression Tool." It isn't optional , and it signs you up for transactional email about the request. It also binds you to PeopleConnect's Terms of Use, which carry a mandatory arbitration agreement and a class action waiver . Opting out of the data broker opts you into arbitration with the data broker. Step 2: verify the email, then confirm who you are Open the verification email and click through. The portal's own step rail reads Start Here, Identity, Suppression Settings , and Identity is the real gate. TruthFinder states what it wants: "You will need to confirm your identity by providing your full name, date of birth, and a phone or email address that you can verify." Their terms add that you must verify at least one email address or phone number to complete the request. Pick a contact point that already appears in the report they hold on you. TruthFinder's own explanation for why it asks: "If you can verify that you still have access to one of the emails or phone numbers listed in the Background Report, we will be able to confirm the report is a match." An address you've never used anywhere may match nothing and leave you stuck at this screen. Your date of birth is used to find the right record because many people share names . That's the whole identity check. No government ID, no selfie, no notary, no postal step. If you verify by phone you'll get a text, and their terms warn that standard text messaging rates may apply. Step 3: set your suppression rules The last screen is Suppression Settings, and one completed suppression covers four sites at once : TruthFinder.com, InstantCheckmate.com, Intelius.com and USSearch.com. PeopleConnect says so on the Suppression Center itself. Don't file four separate requests. If you already started one on Instant Checkmate or Intelius, you were standing in the same portal. Know what the rule actually covers before you close the tab. Suppression applies to name searches only. PeopleConnect's wording: "even if you suppress your Background Report, your name and other information may continue to appear in connection with certain features, for example, in phone, address or email reports that are accessible when someone searches by those criteria, or on registered sex offender lists." A reverse phone or reverse address lookup can still return you after a request that worked exactly as designed. The tool is also revocable, in writing. PeopleConnect calls it "an optional feature made available at our discretion" and reserves the right to restrict it or stop offering it. Treat a successful suppression as a setting somebody else controls , not as a deletion you now own. Then file the relatives and associates form separately Go back to the Data Privacy Center and scroll to Right to Opt Out . Underneath the cookie controls there's a second form, and it's the one people miss: it stops your name from appearing as a possible relative or associate in other people's reports . That's how you keep surfacing after your own report is suppressed, because the report you're showing up in belongs to your sister or your father. The form asks for first name, middle initial, last name, full date of birth , city, state and an email address, then Submit. The Suppression Tool doesn't cover this and won't do it for you. TruthFinder says you'll get an email at that address once the request has been processed. Check back by name, and never file a deletion request No timeline appears in the privacy policy, terms of use, Privacy Center or Suppression Center. The sole figure sits in a help article that in the same paragraph sends readers to a nonexistent opt-out page at TruthFinder.com/people-search and describes a manual support-team queue that is not how the tool works. So the only way to know is to look: search your own name on all four sites , and keep searching it on whatever schedule you'll actually stick to. Here's the trap that undoes all of it. The wrong button is Delete My User Data , and it sits inside the portal you just filed in, at the Suppression Center's privacy center . PeopleConnect states it flatly there: "If you choose to delete your user data, we must delete your any and all suppressions associated with your user," and "Deleting your user information will NOT prevent other users from searching for your information through the people search websites." You have to keep an account with the data broker to stay hidden. The two systems are separate on purpose, and TruthFinder's own FAQ answers the question directly: will a state privacy law deletion request suppress your public data? "No." If you see yourself again, it can be a new record rather than a broken rule . They keep pulling from the same suppliers, and a version of you carrying a different middle initial, a maiden name or a new address is a fresh record your existing rule may never match. Their own hedge: "subtle discrepancies and inaccuracies in data may also make it difficult to remove everything associated with you." Their instruction when it happens is to email privacy@truthfinder.com , which is a person, not a portal, with no published response time. If the self-service route won't take you The report lists only contact points you've lost. Self-verification needs an email or phone that's already in the record and that you can still open, so a number you gave up years ago is a dead end. Email privacy@truthfinder.com or call (855) 921-3711 and say so. Separately, Washington residents with a Washington area code cell phone have a free phone-only route at that same number, Monday to Friday, 7:00am to 4:00pm Pacific: say you're a Washington resident seeking to check for and remove that number. Judges, law enforcement officers, public officials and other protected persons should skip the self-service tool. Email privacy@truthfinder.com with four things: your complete name, date of birth, city and state of residence, phone and email; the specific law you're invoking; your protected status; and the same details for any covered family member you're filing for. They reserve the right to decline if they can't tie the request to a particular statute, and a denial can be appealed to the same address . You can't do this for somebody else through the portal. PeopleConnect's terms bar using the Suppression Tool for commercial purposes or to provide services to third parties, so a spouse, an adult child or a hired firm filing on your behalf is a terms violation. The route that works is an authorized agent request by email, with signed written authorization or a valid power of attorney, and they'll email the consumer separately to confirm your authority . Hashed, randomized or system-generated email addresses can't be processed. Classmates.com is not covered by any of this , same parent company or not, and needs its own request at classmates.com/about/privacy . Last, the ceiling. This hides a display. It doesn't delete anything at the source. PeopleConnect's line is that suppressing your background report "does not affect whether the information will be available from other sources, including the third-party sources of the information." The county clerk, the voter file and the commercial supplier all still hold your address and your relatives' names, PeopleConnect still holds them, and every other people search site is a separate request , with its own form, its own proof and its own way of failing. On this page Open the right form, and skip the footer link Step 1: enter an email address you can open right now Step 2: verify the email, then confirm who you are Step 3: set your suppression rules Then file the relatives and associates form separately Check back by name, and never file a deletion request If the self-service route won't take you Written by Drew Chapin → Updated 2026-09-08 Rather not do this yourself? Personal Information Removal → Related guides How to remove your info from Intelius → How to remove your info from Whitepages → TruthFinder is one site on a long list Personal Information Removal is $399, one time. PeopleConnect's terms bar anyone but you from using the Suppression Tool, so we build that one for your signature and take the rest of the network off your desk: every broker carrying your address, phone number and relatives, each request filed the way that site's own policy demands, then re-checked and re-filed for twelve months , because these sites repost you under a new record and start over. Have us do it. Everything above, filed for you, chased for you, and reported back. One flat fee. See the service → Every guide we publish is free and ungated. Browse all of them , see what we do and what it costs , or read why we built this company . Written by Drew Chapin , who ran all of this on his own name first. © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## How to remove your info from Whitepages
URL: https://discoverability.co/guides/how-to-remove-your-info-from-whitepages/

Home / Guides / Personal information removal: a dozen sites, a dozen forms, and they repost Guide How to remove your info from Whitepages Whitepages will take your listing down, they won't ask for your ID, and it's free . What they will ask for is a phone number and an automated call you have to answer . The tool is five screens, and it won't search for you: you have to find your own listing and paste its URL in. Here's the exact click path, the no-phone route buried on a different page, and what to check afterward. Off the site, not off the record The tool does two things at once, in Whitepages' own words: it will both opt you out of the sale and sharing of your information and will also remove your listing from the Whitepages website . What it is not is a deletion of the source data. Their own list of exceptions to deletion starts with public information that is made available by government agencies, including property records, street address and criminal records . A phone number and a live call No ID upload, no account, no purchase. What the tool takes is a working phone number and you answering an automated call to key in a four-digit code. Whitepages says the number is collected to verify association with the listing and will not be resold or used on our site in any way . It's still a broker asking for one more piece of your data before it gives any back. There is a no-phone route, and it sits on a different page. The word is known Whitepages promises that all known connected listings are also removed . Known is doing the work in that sentence. They anticipate the rest in writing: if you find your listing, or an additional listing you believe relates to you , after completing an opt-out request, submit a request to a customer service agent. Put a re-check on your calendar and treat this as a standing chore rather than a one-time fix. Find your listing and copy its URL The opt-out tool won't search for you. Go to whitepages.com , put your first and last name plus your city and state into People Search, and click View Details on the result that matches. Confirm it's you by checking the phone number and the address shown on the page before you go any further. Then copy the URL out of your browser's address bar. Whitepages says it ends in a small reference number, usually 11 digits long , and gives its own example: whitepages.com/name/Example-A-Person/Seattle-WA/Abcd12345ef. That full URL is the only thing the tool accepts , so describing the listing or pasting the page title gets you nowhere. Search your variants while you're in there: middle initial, maiden name, nicknames, and the cities you've lived in. Keep every URL that comes back. One request covers the listings Whitepages has already connected to each other, and anything they haven't connected is a separate request. Run the five screens The tool is at whitepages.com/suppression-requests , and it opens on Opt-out of Whitepages, STEP 1 OF 5 . Paste your listing URL into the single field and press the blue Next button. You don't need an account and you don't need to buy anything , and Whitepages states that on its own privacy page. Screen two shows the contact details attached to that URL as a final identity check. Click Remove Me . Screen three asks for a reason, and you can pick anything: Whitepages says the reason will not impact your opt-out request and is only used to aid us in improving our product . Click Next. Screen four takes a telephone number, and this is the real gate. Enter it, review the agreement, then press Call Now to Verify . Screen five puts a four-digit code on your display and calls that number: answer, follow the voice prompts, key in the code. The code comes over a voice call, not a text. The page then confirms it's processing the removal, and if a screen breaks, the blue Request Help button opens a ticket with Customer Care. If you won't give them a phone number There's a second route and the tool never mentions it. On the consumer rights page , Whitepages writes that if you would prefer not to provide a phone number or agree to Whitepages' Terms of Service , you should submit your request to a customer service agent instead. Use the same route when the automated call never arrives , because that is where the self-serve flow dead-ends. The agent route is the form at whitepagesprivacy.zendesk.com . Pick I would like to opt-out of having my information sold or shared by Whitepages , or I would like to have my information deleted . An email to privacyrequest@whitepages.com does the same job. Whitepages asks you to allow up to two business days for a reply , and a reply is not a removal. Give the agent your exact listing URL and the details printed on it, because Whitepages says that if we cannot verify your identity, we will not provide, change or delete your personal information . If you're a judge, a law enforcement officer or another official covered by the Daniel Anderl Security and Privacy Act , use that same form, choose the deletion option, state your state of residence, and put your listing URL and your family members' listing URLs in the description . Whitepages says an agent follows up within 48 hours of submission. When to check, and what to check Whitepages states that CCPA opt-out requests may take up to 15 days to process but are often processed more quickly when feasible , and the automated tool is one of the three routes that line covers. The confirmation screen only says they're processing it, so treat submission day as the start and not the finish . Open the URL you pasted in the next day and see whether your details still render. Then search your name on the site again the way you did at the start, variants included. Anything new goes to the agent form , because that is exactly what Whitepages tells you to do: if you find your listing, or an additional listing you believe relates to you, after completing an opt-out request, submit a request to a customer service agent. Google runs on a separate clock. Whitepages says search engines may display cached information from its sites and that clearing it may take up to 30 days in some cases , so check the search results at 30 days instead of the same afternoon. Then set a reminder for 90 and 180 days and search your name again. That last part is the whole job, and it's the part people drop. 411.com and PeopleSearch.com are already covered Don't file this three times. 411.com and PeopleSearch.com both point their Do Not Sell and opt-out links straight at the same Whitepages consumer rights page , PeopleSearch.com labels its link "opt-out page" outright, and Whitepages links both sites from its own footer. One request is the request. Every other site holding your address is its own job , with its own form, its own verification and its own reappearance schedule. Finishing Whitepages doesn't touch a single one of them, so the next thing to do is list the other sites your name comes back on and work down them one at a time. What the removal doesn't reach The public records underneath don't move. Whitepages puts it plainly: they do not have the ability to hide your information on databases we don't control, such as public records . The county property record and the court file don't change because a listing came down, and taking those on is a different piece of work in a different place. The statutory right to deletion doesn't reach most of it either. Whitepages' exceptions to deletion begin with public information that is made available by government agencies, including property records, street address and criminal records . So the voluntary opt-out tool is what actually pulls your listing , not the legal right, which is why the five screens are the thing to do today. You also can't correct it. Whitepages states it is not able to correct data that originates from public records , and that it may treat a correction request as a deletion request instead. If your listing shows the wrong address or the wrong relatives, removal is the only lever you have . On this page Find your listing and copy its URL Run the five screens If you won't give them a phone number When to check, and what to check 411.com and PeopleSearch.com are already covered What the removal doesn't reach Written by Drew Chapin → Updated 2026-09-08 Rather not do this yourself? Personal Information Removal → Whitepages is one site on a long list Do the Whitepages opt-out yourself. It's free, it's five screens, and nobody should charge you for it. When your address and your relatives' names are sitting on the rest of the broker network too, Personal Information Removal is $399, one time : we work the whole list, handle each site's own form and verification, and keep checking for twelve months , because these sites repost. Have us do it. Everything above, filed for you, chased for you, and reported back. One flat fee. See the service → Every guide we publish is free and ungated. Browse all of them , see what we do and what it costs , or read why we built this company . Written by Drew Chapin , who ran all of this on his own name first. © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## How to remove your listing from Radaris: one record at a time, People Search only
URL: https://discoverability.co/guides/how-to-remove-your-listing-from-radaris/

Home / Guides / Personal information removal: a dozen sites, a dozen forms, and they repost Guide How to remove your listing from Radaris: one record at a time, People Search only Radaris will pull your listing out of its People Search results for free, in about a day by its own account, and it asks for nothing but a working email address. It won't delete anything, the online form only handles one record , and it leaves the phone and address directories it also runs completely alone. Start at radaris.com/control-privacy . The old removal link now lands on a page with no form. You get hidden, not deleted Radaris calls it removal. Its own privacy policy calls it what it is: you may request that Radaris block specific records under its control from appearing in search results . The data stays, the display stops. The opt-out page frames the whole thing as a courtesy rather than a right, and it only covers People Search. An email address, and it has to be a real one No ID upload, no account, no fee. You give them an email address and solve a reCAPTCHA. But masked addresses are refused in writing : hashed, randomized or system-generated emails cannot be processed. Apple's Hide My Email, a DuckDuckGo Duck Address and a SimpleLogin alias all fail that test. Use a mailbox you actually read. The form takes exactly one record Straight from their FAQ: we only permit you to remove one record from our People Search Results through our online Opt-Out process . Radaris splits one person across several records over spellings, initials and old addresses, so every record after the first is a manual email to customer-service@radaris.com. Count your records before you submit, or you'll think you're finished when you aren't. Go to the page that has the form on it Open radaris.com/control-privacy . Both footer links, Remove My Info and Do Not Sell My Info , land on that same page. The URL still printed in older guides, radaris.com/page/how-to-remove, now redirects to the Data Privacy Center , which is a rights and FAQ page with no removal form anywhere on it . You need a real browser for this. Every path on radaris.com sits behind a Cloudflare challenge and returns a 403 to anything that doesn't run JavaScript, so a script or a command line gets you nothing. Click NEXT . The first screen has no input on it, only Radaris telling you that federal law doesn't require them to delete public information and that they offer removal as a courtesy. Find every record with your name before you touch the form Search yourself on Radaris first and write down the exact profile URL of every record that comes back, including the ones carrying a middle initial, a maiden name, or an address you left fifteen years ago. Radaris splits one person across several records over exactly those differences, and its FAQ admits it creates a separate record whenever a new feed doesn't match the old one. Expect a long list. Searching John Smith in Boston, MA on September 8, 2026 returned Found 196 people. Please select your profile. with a Select button on each card and no remove-all control anywhere . Use the Refine your search link rather than scrolling. Also check the per-state address and phone directories listed at radaris.com/page/regional , because those profile URLs are accepted by the same form. Then pick which record goes through the form. Choose the one that actually appears when you Google your own name. That is the record other people see, and it is the only one the online process will take. Put that record through the form Screen two is Please identify your personal page , and there are two ways through it. The fast one is the Or Enter URL of your page box: paste the profile URL you already found and skip the hunt entirely. Radaris's own example in that field is a state subdomain address, so a listing you found on a regional site pastes in here fine. The slower way is the search: your first and last name in one box, your city and state in the next . You get a Found N people screen, and picking your own record out of that list is your job, not theirs. Match on the ages, relatives and previous cities shown on each card, click Select on the right one, and tick the box confirming the information you want removed is yours. Confirm the email, or nothing has happened The verification screen wants your email address and a reCAPTCHA. Use the real mailbox, for the reason above. Then hit Submit, and Radaris tells you it will send a link and a confirmation code. Go to that email and use both. Until you click the link and enter the code, your request sits there doing nothing at all. A second email then confirms the record has been opted out, and that second email is what starts the clock , not the moment you pressed Submit. Don't buy anything on the way through. The opt-out flow and the Data Privacy Center both push a Scan Your Online Reputation Now! button into Radaris's own paid monitoring product. It is not part of the removal, and the removal is free: their FAQ says you never have to pay to remove your own record, and that you don't need to register an account either . Check it tomorrow, then check the rest of the site Radaris puts it at about 24 hours from that confirmation email, when their server next refreshes. Search your name again after that, and clear your browser cache first, which is their own instruction. That timing is Radaris's claim, not a deadline you can hold them to , and they publish no deadline of their own. Then search yourself again in the parts of the site the opt-out never covered. Their FAQ is blunt about it: your name might appear in search results for the other search services available through Radaris even after you opt-out of People Search . The address lookups and phone directories on the regional subdomains are separate products, and so is the who-called-me tool. One opt-out does not clear the site. Email for the records the form wouldn't take Every record after the first goes to customer-service@radaris.com , which is the address their FAQ names for exactly this. Send the profile URLs you collected, write from the same mailbox you just verified with, and say you have already opted out of one record and want the others removed too. There is also a phone line, (855) 723-2747 , published on the Data Privacy Center for exercising privacy rights. Radaris publishes no timeline for this manual cleanup , so there is no service level to point at and nothing to chase against. Send it, keep the thread, and follow up if the record is still live a week later. Don't hand this to an automated opt-out service. Radaris states that signatures appearing automated, system-generated or otherwise unverified may be subject to additional scrutiny or rejection, and its submit form carries a hidden browser fingerprint field alongside your email. A tool that files in bulk is the exact thing that language was written to refuse. Expect it back, and know where to escalate Radaris warns you in its own FAQ that a data partner can hand it a new record it cannot match to your old one , and a fresh profile appears in People Search. Nobody tells you when that happens. The remedy is another email to customer-service@radaris.com. Put a recurring reminder in your calendar and re-check by name and by every old address, not once and done. If a request is denied and you live in Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Iowa, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Oregon, Texas, Tennessee or Virginia , they publish an appeal: email removals@radaris.com with the state you are writing from and your supporting documentation. Judges, prosecutors, law enforcement and their household family use that same address under Daniel's Law , with either a link to the record or a full name, date of birth, city and state. Californians, don't wait on DROP. Registered data brokers have had to process deletion requests through the state platform since August 1, 2026 , but Radaris does not appear on the CPPA data broker registry , so a DROP request never reaches it. Do the Radaris form directly. On this page Go to the page that has the form on it Find every record with your name before you touch the form Put that record through the form Confirm the email, or nothing has happened Check it tomorrow, then check the rest of the site Email for the records the form wouldn't take Expect it back, and know where to escalate Written by Drew Chapin → Updated 2026-09-08 Rather not do this yourself? Personal Information Removal → Radaris is one site, and your address is on a dozen more Send the Radaris request yourself, it's free and it takes an email address. When the same address and the same list of relatives is also sitting on Spokeo, Whitepages, BeenVerified and the rest, Personal Information Removal is $399 and covers the whole broker network, plus twelve months of monitoring , because these sites put you back. Have us do it. Everything above, filed for you, chased for you, and reported back. One flat fee. See the service → Every guide we publish is free and ungated. Browse all of them , see what we do and what it costs , or read why we built this company . Written by Drew Chapin , who ran all of this on his own name first. © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## How to remove your mugshot from BustedNewspaper: one hidden form, four accepted dispositions
URL: https://discoverability.co/guides/how-to-remove-your-mugshot-from-bustednewspaper/

Home / Guides / Content removal: who published it decides what comes down News and articles How to remove your mugshot from BustedNewspaper: one hidden form, four accepted dispositions One hidden web form is the entire removal route , and it takes exactly four dispositions: expunged, dismissed, sealed, or not guilty. There's no fee, no phone route, and no email address designated for removals. Get your court paperwork in hand before you open it, because the form is the last step and not the first. Then file one request per booking URL, keep your own record of it, and check your name again on day 10. What you actually get The one page you name comes off their site. That's the whole outcome. It doesn't touch the Facebook copy of your booking, it doesn't seal or expunge anything at the county, and it doesn't reach the other sites carrying the same arrest. Their images also sit on a separate host, cdn.bustednewspaper.com, and nothing on the site says whether the photo file is purged when the post goes , so you check that yourself afterward. What you have to hand over Your name, email, a phone number, the exact post URL, a reason from a fixed menu, and a document under 3 MB. Message is the only optional field on the page. Acceptable proof is stated above the form: legal documentation of expunged, dismissed, nol prossed, not guilty or sealed, and "A letter from your attorney documenting same will be accepted." No fee appears on the form, the terms or the privacy policy, and the form has no payment field. What stops it working The Reason menu, which has four values and no free-text alternative: Expunged, Dismissed, Sealed, Not Guilty. There's no "other," no pending-case option and no conviction option. A case still open, a conviction that stands, a deferred adjudication or a plea in abeyance has nothing to select , which means this form isn't your remedy yet. The court order is the step before it. Check the four words before you do anything else Open the removal form and read the Reason menu first. It offers Expunged, Dismissed, Sealed and Not Guilty , and nothing else. If your disposition isn't one of those four, stop here and go get it, because there's no box on this form that describes your situation and no free-text field that substitutes for one. The instructions and the menu don't agree, and that trips people. The line above the form says to attach legal documentation of expunged, dismissed, nol prossed, not guilty or sealed , but nolle prosequi isn't in the menu. Pick Dismissed and write "nolle prosequi" in the Message box , which is the one place on the page you can explain anything. You won't find this form from a menu or a footer link, and that's why so many people conclude there's no removal route at all. It's linked from exactly two places on the site: the words brought to our attention inside a sentence on their About us page , and a notice printed at the top of every booking post. The address is https://bustednewspaper.com/remove-a-listing/ , and /remove/ redirects there. Copy the exact post URL, one request per booking Open your own booking page on bustednewspaper.com and copy the address straight out of the browser bar. The rule printed under the field is literal: "The URL must be from https://bustednewspaper.com" . Send anything else and you've spent the wait for nothing. The URL field is a single line, so one submission covers one page. Three bookings means three separate submissions, each with its own document upload and its own reCAPTCHA. Build the list of URLs before you start filling anything in, and work them one at a time. Every booking post tells you the route in its own text, so you're in the right place: "If you believe that your name appears in error or the booking was expunged, dismissed, sealed or not guilty please contact us at https://bustednewspaper.com/remove-a-listing/ and we will address any discrepancies." Those are the same four words as the menu. If you found this through a shared Facebook post, the form itself tells you how to get the underlying address: open the shared link, then either tap the three-dot menu in the in-app browser and select "Copy link", or open the post in an external browser and copy the URL from the address bar. Submit the bustednewspaper.com address, not the Facebook one. Get your document under 3 MB The upload is required and the cap is 3 MB , which is the easiest way to lose a request you did everything else right on. A scanned multi-page expungement order blows past that cap without trying. Flatten it, compress it, or attach only the page that shows the disposition , and look at the file size before you attach it. Allowed file types are doc, docx, pdf, png, jpg, jpeg, tif and tiff . If your order is a heavy scan and your attorney will write you a one-page letter, that letter is the easier attachment, because the form accepts "A letter from your attorney documenting same" on its face. Most of the work here is the document, not the form. If every booking shares one disposition, later submissions go faster because you reuse the same file. Bookings from separate cases each need their own document matching the Reason you select. Fill the form and send it Seven things are required and one isn't. Required: Name, Email, Phone, Post URL to be Removed, Reason, the document upload, and the acknowledgment checkbox . Message is the only optional field on the page , and it's where the disposition detail and your case number belong. The phone field reads "Phone (verification callback)" and it's required like the rest. Put in a number you'll actually answer. Nothing on the page promises anyone will call, but they built the field to say they might , and an unreachable number is a quiet way to lose the request with no notice. Tick the box that reads "Acknowledged that verifying the validity of your request and removing your listing from this site may take up to 5-10 days." Solve the reCAPTCHA, then click the button labeled Send . It's a human-only form in a real browser, so there's nothing to script and nobody can batch it for you. The form has no payment field, and no fee is published anywhere on the site. Not on the removal page, not in the terms of service, not in the privacy policy. Anyone quoting you a BustedNewspaper removal fee is charging you to fill in seven boxes. Take your own receipt, because they don't issue one Nothing on that page promises a confirmation email, a ticket number or a status page. Screenshot the completed form before you hit Send, screenshot whatever appears after, and write down the date, the exact URL you submitted and which Reason you selected. That screenshot is your only proof you filed. The only published timeline is the one inside the checkbox you ticked: up to 5 to 10 days. They don't say whether those are business days, and it's their claim about their own turnaround rather than anything you can hold them to. Count from your submission date and search your own name on day 10. Don't refile in the meantime and don't go hunting for a second address. There isn't one. /removal/, /opt-out/, /takedown/, /remove-my-record/ and /record-removal/ all return a 404, so the form is the whole route until the window closes. If day 10 passes and it's still up Send the form again. There's no appeal process, no escalation address and no guaranteed response time anywhere on the site, and nothing indicates a repeat gets suppressed. Fix the likeliest defect first: an attachment over 3 MB, a URL that isn't on bustednewspaper.com, or a document that doesn't plainly show one of the four dispositions without someone having to interpret it. Then email info@bustednewspaper.com , the only address published on the site, which appears on their contact page . Attach the same document, name the exact post URL, and give the date of your first submission. That address is published for general inquiries and isn't designated for removals , so treat it as a second channel, not the real one. Their terms of service point every complaint at one place and name no other method: "In order to resolve a complaint regarding the Site or to receive further information regarding use of the Site, please contact us by using the contact form." That's your third and last published channel. After that you're paying a lawyer, so know what they're walking into. The site publishes no legal entity, no postal address, no registered agent and no designated copyright agent , so serving anything starts with a registrar or hosting trace you'll be billed for. The footer credit reads Teabar Publishing, and that's the only corporate name printed anywhere on the site. What this form doesn't reach Don't file a DMCA notice about your own mugshot. The DMCA section in their terms is the only takedown machinery in that document, and it's a copyright tool. Your booking photo was taken by a sheriff's office, so you don't own the copyright in it, and their own terms spell out that a notification carries a statement made under penalty of perjury . Using the wrong tool here costs you more than the delay. Don't send a "delete my data" request either. Their privacy policy was last updated on September 6, 2019, carries no state-privacy section and publishes no privacy address to send one to. Its only removal language is a COPPA line about children under 13. The site footer also disclaims being a consumer reporting agency, so there's no credit-style dispute to file and nothing ages off by itself . Removing the post doesn't remove the Facebook copy, and the form's own Facebook instructions are the tell that these listings syndicate there. That's a separate approach to Meta. Once the page is gone, open the direct image address on cdn.bustednewspaper.com and check it too , because nothing states that the photo file goes when the post does. None of this seals or expunges anything. The county's record is untouched, and every other site carrying the same booking takes its own request, in its own format, with its own proof and its own wait. Getting the BustedNewspaper page down is one line item on that list , not the end of it. On this page Check the four words before you do anything else Copy the exact post URL, one request per booking Get your document under 3 MB Fill the form and send it Take your own receipt, because they don't issue one If day 10 passes and it's still up What this form doesn't reach Written by Drew Chapin → Updated 2026-09-08 Rather not do this yourself? Content Removal → Related guides How to remove arrest records from Google → Reputation management after an arrest → BustedNewspaper is rarely the only copy File this one yourself today, because it's free and it's a single form. Content Removal is $499 to $1,999 per case , and it's for the rest of the list: the mugshot aggregators, the Facebook post, the news write-up and the scraper sites that copied your booking before you ever saw it. We find every URL, file under each site's own published policy , chase the replies, and give you a written status on every one. Have us do it. Everything above, filed for you, chased for you, and reported back. One flat fee. See the service → Every guide we publish is free and ungated. Browse all of them , see what we do and what it costs , or read why we built this company . Written by Drew Chapin , who ran all of this on his own name first. © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## How to remove your mugshot from Google: the free request that deletes it, and the form that comes back denied
URL: https://discoverability.co/guides/how-to-remove-your-mugshot-from-google/

Home / Guides / Content removal: who published it decides what comes down News and articles How to remove your mugshot from Google: the free request that deletes it, and the form that comes back denied Copy every URL first, the image results included, then send the court document to the address that actually deletes, then file with Google last. The deletion runs on court paper, and the Google form is the step most likely to come back denied , so working in that order saves you a wasted week. Every request on this page is free. We'll say where each one stops working, and what none of it can touch. What you actually get Two different outcomes, and they're not close. Mugshots.com deletes the page only for expungement, seal, no information, record restriction, identity theft or death. A dismissal or an acquittal gets you an update the site itself marks as not a removal, with your disposition "prominently displayed on all pages relating to your arrest." Google's side is de-indexing, never deletion: the reported URL stops appearing in Google search results and the photo stays live on the site . What you hand over For the site: a court document signed by a judge and sealed by the court, and legible , plus the ID number at the end of your own page's URL, right before .html. No fee, no ID upload, no notarized letter. For Google's form: your full name, a contact email, your country of residence, the exact URLs and the Google Search results page URLs are all required , along with a written explanation of how the site is exploitative. Screenshots there are optional , though they help reviewers find the photo. What stops it working Google's exploitative-sites policy has three requirements, and the third is that the website requires payment to the site or other agencies to have the content removed . Mugshots.com now states in capitals that it does not accept payment for removal of arrest information or booking photographs. A site that charges you nothing fails that requirement , which is why the Google form most people get pointed at comes back denied on a booking photo. Copy every URL, and pull the image results separately Search your name in quotes, then your name with your city, then your name with the word arrest, and copy the exact URL of every page that comes back . Then run those same three searches on the Images tab, because a booking photo often ranks as an image under a page you never saw in the web results . Every request below runs per URL, so a URL you didn't find is a photo that stays up. An image result needs its own address, not the page address. Right-click the thumbnail in image search results and select Copy link address , then save that string beside the page URL. Different browsers name that command differently , so look for whatever copies a link location. You need both later: Google's removal form takes a webpage, image or video URL, and the refresh tool has a separate Image path that accepts only the image link. On every page, write down two things. The ID number at the end of the URL, right before .html , because Mugshots.com asks for its own ID in the request, and whether the site is demanding money to take the photo down. Screenshot a payment demand before you contact anyone , because paying wipes out the only evidence that helps you at Google. Leave the sheriff's roster and the clerk's docket off the list and work the private copies. Send the court document to the address that deletes The policy sits on the Record Maintenance page, reached from RECORD REMOVALS/UPDATES in the site's own navigation, and it's free: "Mugshots.com does not charge for removing or updating mugshots/arrest records." The page is deleted only with expungement, seal, no information, record restriction, identity theft or death. Email the court documentation to mugshots.com1@gmail.com and put your Mugshots.com ID in the message. Send a clean, full-page scan of the whole order, never a phone photo. The standard is in their words: the documentation "must be signed by a judge and sealed by the court and be legible" , and "Non-legible documents will be discarded and no notification will be provided." The stated window is up to 10 business days, with no guarantee of timeliness, so keep the sent mail and the exact file you attached. A bad scan and being ignored look identical from where you're sitting. Two other outcomes go to a different address entirely. A favorable disposition, meaning not guilty, dismissal, acquitted, exonerated, pardoned, nolle prosequi, adjudication withheld or no file, goes to docverify1@gmail.com , and the site marks that result as not a removal. Same address if you finished a non-favorable case and hold court satisfaction documents for fines, probation or time served. A certified death certificate goes back to mugshots.com1@gmail.com. Keep the email flat and civil, even though you have every reason not to be. The policy says abusive contact "may disqualify you from our Record Maintenance program" , and their contact page reserves the right to publish any communication submitted by you, your agent, or your attorney . An angry letter is a page they can post. File with Google, but check the third requirement first One Google policy touches booking photos: remove content about you on exploitative sites that try to charge for removal , and all three of its requirements have to be true . You're a subject of the content in the URL you submit, the website is not a business review site, and the website requires payment to the site or other agencies to have the content removed. It starts at that page's Start removal request button, which opens the removal form . The third requirement is where booking photos die , so check it before you spend an hour filling anything in. Pick Content is on a site with exploitative removal practices at "Why are you requesting personal content removal from Google Search?", give your country of residence, and the next screen asks "Has the website asked you to pay money to the site or to an agency for personal content removal?" Mugshots.com now says in writing that it doesn't, so a No there is a denial waiting to happen . If the site is charging you, keep going. Required : a written explanation of how the site is exploitative, your full name, whether the person in the content is you, a contact email, your country, the Specific content URLs box, which takes a webpage, image or video URL one per line, up to 1,000 lines , the Google Search results page URLs box, and the confirmation checkbox at the end. Screenshots are optional. The Google Search results page URLs box is required , and like the content box it takes one URL per line. Only the URLs you list get reviewed, so every page about you needs its own line. Don't file at Results about you . It covers home addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, Social Security, passport and driver's license numbers, and there's no category for a booking photo , so a mugshot URL there returns a denial that reads like Google refusing you when it's really the wrong door. Google also warns on the exploitative form that it generally aims to preserve information access if the content is determined to be of public interest , and it publishes no turnaround time anywhere, so anyone quoting you one is guessing. Florida's statute is the one that still reaches a free site Almost every guide says a mugshot site escapes the state laws by going free. In Florida that's wrong. Florida Statute 901.43 reaches a publisher of arrest booking photographs if it solicits or accepts payment for removal, or if "the person's or entity's primary business model is the publishing and disseminating of arrest booking photographs for a commercial purpose or pecuniary gain." Two separate triggers, and the second one doesn't care what the site charges. It doesn't require a court order either. The procedure is specific, and the specifics are what people get wrong. The written request goes by registered mail to the registered agent of the person or entity that published the photo, and it has to carry sufficient proof of your identity plus specific information identifying the photograph. Within 10 calendar days of receipt they must remove it without charge and may not republish it. If they don't, you can bring a civil action to enjoin publication, and the court may impose $1,000 per day for noncompliance with the injunction, $5,000 per day for republishing, and shall award reasonable attorney fees and court costs . The catch is having somebody to mail. Mugshots.com's own site says it's "Owned and Operated by: Julkisuudessa, Nevis, West Indies" and names no US registered agent, so the statute's first step has no address to point at. Check the other two before you pay anyone to write a letter. California Civil Code 1798.91.1 bans the removal fee and gives you $1,000 per violation or actual damages, but it creates no duty to remove anything . Texas Business and Commerce Code 109.002 only reaches a site charging $150 or more to remove, or any fee at all to correct , so a free site sits outside that chapter for an adult record. The exception is a confidential record from conduct before you turned 17 , which Texas reaches regardless of any fee. If the photo is on a record lookup site, it's a different form Booking photos have spread well past the mugshot sites. RecordsFinder publishes categories it labels Arrest Records, Booking Records and Police Records , and it has no mugshot policy at all: removal there runs through privacy law, on a page headed YOUR PRIVACY CHOICES . None of the court paperwork above is what that site is asking for. The form is Request to Opt-Out of the Sale and/or Sharing of Your Personal Information on the Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information page. First Name, Last Name and State are required, and City is optional. Then read their note, because it's the trap: a submission removes only the record you select, and "each record must be submitted separately." If you asked for confirmation and nothing lands within 15 days, email privacy@recordsfinder.com. Their broader privacy page commits to a response within 45 days, or notice that they need longer. Two more things, and only one of them is on that page. Skip the cookie preferences form on the Do Not Sell page, which handles advertising trackers and does nothing to your booking record. The expungement lane is back on the Your Privacy Choices page: if your case was expunged, sealed or restricted, email privacy@recordsfinder.com with the subject line "Attention Expungement Records." They warn plainly that expunged records may still appear because they aggregate from public sources. Clear the leftover result once the photo is gone A deleted page can keep showing on your name for a while. Run the dead URL through Refresh Outdated Content : select Request refresh , stay on the Page tab, enter the URL, then Submit . It needs a Google account, and it does nothing until the content is actually gone or changed at the source , so confirm the photo is off the page before you file anything. The image is a separate submission, and it's the one people skip. Google's own steps : find the image at images.google.com, right-click the thumbnail, select Copy link address , then choose Request refresh , New request , Image , paste the link into the search results URL box and Submit . Status shows under Refresh outdated content in Search Console , so check it rather than assuming it held. Then re-run all four searches on a schedule you'll actually keep: your name in quotes, your name with your city, your name with the word arrest, and the same three on the Images tab. A new URL is a new request , and it starts back at the top of this page with the same court document you already have. Where this stops, and what doing it yourself costs None of these requests costs money. Mugshots.com says so on its own policy page, Florida's statute says removal happens "without charge," and Google's form is free. What it costs is repetition: every copy is a separate request, in that site's format, to that site's address , most of them never reply, and one of them throws away a bad scan without telling you. It stops on a conviction that stands. Every deletion trigger on this page keys on a court order that erases the case, or on identity theft or death , so if you were convicted and it hasn't been expunged, sealed or restricted, you meet none of them, and the only request left is the Florida one above, which turns on the publisher's business model rather than on your disposition. Outside Florida, there is no form to file. What's left is suppression, meaning building pages that outrank the photo, and that's a build rather than a request. The honest limit on everything above: de-indexing is not deletion . Google's own words are that the content may still exist on the web, and people may find it through a shared link, a social media post, or a different search engine. And taking a copy down does not seal or expunge the court's own record. The clerk's file and the sheriff's booking roster stay exactly where they are. On this page Copy every URL, and pull the image results separately Send the court document to the address that deletes File with Google, but check the third requirement first Florida's statute is the one that still reaches a free site If the photo is on a record lookup site, it's a different form Clear the leftover result once the photo is gone Where this stops, and what doing it yourself costs Written by Drew Chapin → Updated 2026-09-08 Rather not do this yourself? Content Removal → Related guides How to remove arrest records from Google → Reputation management after an arrest → How to use Google's removal tools on a court record → Send us the URLs before you send anybody a letter Content Removal is $499 to $1,999, priced per case. We find every copy of the photo, image results included, check what each site's own policy actually allows before you pay anything , file each request in that site's format, and send you a written status on every URL. If there's no route, that's the answer and it costs you nothing. Have us do it. Everything above, filed for you, chased for you, and reported back. One flat fee. See the service → Every guide we publish is free and ungated. Browse all of them , see what we do and what it costs , or read why we built this company . Written by Drew Chapin , who ran all of this on his own name first. © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## How to remove your mugshot from JailBase: the site is 404ing, so today's job is the Google result
URL: https://discoverability.co/guides/how-to-remove-your-mugshot-from-jailbase/

Home / Guides / Content removal: who published it decides what comes down News and articles How to remove your mugshot from JailBase: the site is 404ing, so today's job is the Google result Every page on jailbase.com returns a 404 right now. We checked the homepage, the search page and the opt-out page on September 8, 2026, and all of them error out. That changes today's job: instead of filing an opt-out you can't reach, you clear the leftover result out of Google with the free tool for pages that are gone. Here's that, and here's the opt-out for if the site comes back: jailbase.com has not served its own pages since April 2024, so treat the opt-out as the second half of the job, not this week's. What you actually get Two different outcomes, and only one of them is available today . Google's tool for outdated pages takes the result out of search without touching the page, and Google's help page says an approved request expires once 180 days have passed. JailBase's own opt-out is the one that removes the page, 90 days after you request it , and it's free. Neither one touches the sheriff's roster your booking was copied from. What you have to hand over For Google, a Google account and the exact URL . For the JailBase opt-out, an email address and a US mobile number , and that is the entire form. No ID document, no court paperwork, no expungement order, no notarization, no fee. Their privacy policy is dated March 14, 2012 and says they may pass personal information to business partners so those partners can send you promotional material, so use an address and a number you don't mind giving away . What stops it working Not having the exact URL. Both routes are keyed to one address, and with the site erroring out you can't search JailBase for your own record, so the Google result is the first place to copy it from, and the Wayback Machine is the fallback. And it's one URL per booking , because the opt-out is per record and not per person. Two arrests mean two forms and two separate clocks. Copy the JailBase URL out of the Google result Search your full name in quotes, then your name with the county or the jail, and find the jailbase.com result. Copy the link straight out of the search result instead of clicking through, because every JailBase address is erroring and what you need is the URL, not the page. If two JailBase results come back, copy both. Those are two records and they get handled separately. If no jailbase.com result comes back, search web.archive.org for jailbase.com/arrested and filter on your name: the archive holds the record pages the live site no longer serves, and the URL is what you need either way. Then paste it into a browser and see what answers. You should get a bare page headed Error: 404 Not Found , which is what we got on the homepage, the search page and the opt-out page on September 8, 2026. That 404 is the condition the Google request runs on, so confirm it before you file rather than after. File the outdated content request with Google today The tool is Refresh Outdated Content , and it's the right one precisely because you don't own the page . Google's help page says verified site owners use a different tool, so don't go hunting through Search Console for the Removals report. Sign in with any Google account, paste the URL, submit. One request per URL. Google grants these when the page no longer exists or has changed significantly, and a 404 is exactly that . What you get back is an index change and nothing more: the help page says plainly that the tool updates Google's results and does not remove anything from the web. Put a date 180 days out in your calendar , because Google says a request expires once 180 days have passed since it was approved. If JailBase is serving that address again by then, expect the result to come back, and find out by searching your name rather than by assuming either way. When jailbase.com answers again, the opt-out is free and it's two fields Everything below is JailBase's own flow as their pages last described it: the opt-out instructions as of January 2024, the About and privacy pages as of April 2024, and the record-page form itself from a 2022 capture. If the site returns rebuilt, expect it to differ, and re-read their pages before you trust these steps. Don't start at jailbase.com/opt-out. That page has no form on it. It carries a Step 1 and a Step 2 and points you at the search page, and it's where people give up. The form lives on your own record and the record is the only route to it. So: the search page first, where the fields are First name and Last name . Open your record. On that page the link reads Opt Out and it sits inside the Details block directly under Notes: , not at the bottom of the page where their own instructions send you. It's tagged nofollow and noindex, so nothing on the site and no search will surface it for you. The form is headed request opt-out and shows You are requesting to Opt-Out the following individual: with your name in capitals. Two fields, Your E-mail: and Mobile phone: , the second wanting a US number typed as +15555555555 because they send a verification code by SMS. Neither field is marked required in the page's own markup, but both channels get used to verify you, so fill in both , then press Request Opt-Out. Mark 90 days, and ignore the 30 you'll also see The opt-out page says 90 days : once an opt-out is requested for a page, they automatically remove the page 90 days from the date it was requested. Their About page says 30 days in two places, and one of its own FAQ answers on the same page says 90. Plan on 90 and treat 30 as a bonus. There is no ticket number, no status page and nobody to chase , so the calendar entry is the entire follow-up system. When the date comes up, search your name and open the URL yourself. If the page is gone but the search result is still sitting there, that's when you run the Google request a second time . JailBase says it sets a removed page up to come out of the major search engines, then says it doesn't control them and it can take a few weeks, so that half is on you either way. Nobody can charge you, and court paperwork won't move them Paying for a JailBase removal buys you nothing. Their own FAQ answer is blunt: JailBase does not accept money to remove arrest information, they say they have never accepted it, and if someone charged you they advise asking for a refund and reporting them. If you were solicited in California, Civil Code 1798.91.1 makes it unlawful to solicit, require or accept a fee to remove a booking photograph, and it gives you the greater of $1,000 per violation or your actual damages plus fees, with each payment counted as a separate violation . Sending them your disposition doesn't work either. Their FAQ says the policy is not to remove records unless they're inaccurate, and that what happens in a court of law, when charges are dropped for example, is outside the scope of the site. The bar for inaccurate is narrow on top of that: if their information matches what's reported publicly, they consider it accurate. The opt-out is the route, not the paperwork. The one thing the contact form is for is a real factual error , a wrong name, a wrong charge, a booking that isn't yours. That form asks for a name, an email address and a message, and only the email address is marked required. If the arrest was in Florida, there's a statute with a 10-day clock Florida Statute 901.43 lets you or your legal representative send a written removal request by registered mail to the publisher's registered agent , with sufficient proof of your identity and specific information identifying the photograph. The publisher then has 10 calendar days to remove it without charge, and may not republish it. The teeth are real. A court can enjoin continued publication, impose $1,000 a day for noncompliance with that injunction and $5,000 a day if the photo is republished, and award your attorney fees, and refusal counts as an unfair or deceptive trade practice under chapter 501. The blocker is the agent. JailBase publishes no company name and no mailing address anywhere on the site and its domain registration sits behind a privacy service, so as of today we can't tell you where to send it. The statute also reaches a publisher only if it charges for removal or its primary business is publishing booking photos commercially, and JailBase says loudly that it has never charged. That makes this a question for a lawyer, not a letter you mail this afternoon. What none of this touches The opt-out removes one JailBase page. It doesn't reach the sheriff's or county jail's own roster, which is where the booking came from and which JailBase links to as View Source, and it doesn't reach the other sites that copied the same booking. Every one of those is a separate request to a separate person. It seals nothing and expunges nothing. Taking a mugshot page off an aggregator changes not one line in the court's file or the arresting agency's record, and it isn't a substitute for whatever sealing or expungement you're entitled to where the arrest happened. And don't tell yourself the record is gone because the site is erroring. The 404 page names a malformed address in its own error text, which reads like a server misconfiguration rather than a shutdown, so those pages can come back at the same URLs. Search your name once a quarter. The site has been erroring since 2024, so this is a long watch, not a monthly chore, and if a JailBase page ever answers again, that is the day you file the opt-out. On this page Copy the JailBase URL out of the Google result File the outdated content request with Google today When jailbase.com answers again, the opt-out is free and it's two fields Mark 90 days, and ignore the 30 you'll also see Nobody can charge you, and court paperwork won't move them If the arrest was in Florida, there's a statute with a 10-day clock What none of this touches Written by Drew Chapin → Updated 2026-09-08 Rather not do this yourself? Content Removal → Related guides How to remove arrest records from Google → Reputation management after an arrest → How to use Google's removal tools on a court record → JailBase is one copy of one booking File the Google request yourself today, it's free and it takes a few minutes. When the same booking is also sitting on four other mugshot sites and a local news page, Content Removal is $499 to $1,999 , set by what each site's own policy allows, and we file under that policy, chase the replies, and re-check every page after a site says it has acted. We tell you which URLs have a route before you pay anything. Have us do it. Everything above, filed for you, chased for you, and reported back. One flat fee. See the service → Every guide we publish is free and ungated. Browse all of them , see what we do and what it costs , or read why we built this company . Written by Drew Chapin , who ran all of this on his own name first. © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## How to remove your mugshot from Mugshots.com: two email addresses, and only one of them removes anything
URL: https://discoverability.co/guides/how-to-remove-your-mugshot-from-mugshots-com/

Home / Guides / Content removal: who published it decides what comes down News and articles How to remove your mugshot from Mugshots.com: two email addresses, and only one of them removes anything Mugshots.com removal is free and it runs entirely on email. No form, no portal, no account, no fee. Two addresses do different jobs: mugshots.com1@gmail.com takes a record down, docverify1@gmail.com only adds your disposition to a page that stays live. Get your Mugshots.com ID out of the record's URL first, because every request needs it and the site never shows it to you. Then wait ten business days. What you actually get Six things get a record removed and nothing else does: expungement, seal, no information, record restriction, identity theft, or death. A dismissal, a not guilty, an acquittal, a pardon or a nolle prosequi gets you an update instead, and the policy marks it not a removal . The page, the photo and the URL all stay live, and your disposition gets displayed on the pages relating to your arrest. What you have to hand over Your Mugshots.com ID and one court document, attached to a plain email. For a removal the document has to be signed by a judge and sealed by the court and legible , all three. For a death it's a certified copy of the death certificate. No government ID, no account, no notarization, and no fee at any point. What stops it working A scan they can't read. The policy says non-legible documents are discarded and no notification is provided, so a bad photo of a good order looks exactly like a refusal and you never find out which it was. The other one is paperwork that doesn't clear the bar : a docket printout off the clerk's website isn't judge-signed and court-sealed. Get your Mugshots.com ID out of the URL Every request has to carry your Mugshots.com ID, and the only place that number exists is the address bar . Search your name, open your own page on the site, and read the URL. It's shaped mugshots.com/Category/First-Last.NUMBER.html , and the number sitting between your name and .html is the ID. Copy the number and the whole URL. Don't hunt the page for a field labeled ID, because there isn't one. The policy tells you to include it and the record itself never displays it, which is why so many requests go out without it. If more than one page on the site is you, each one has its own ID , so list every ID and every URL in the same email. Pick the email address by what your paperwork says Removals go to mugshots.com1@gmail.com. The Record Maintenance policy is blunt about which situations qualify: expungement, seal, no information, record restriction, identity theft, or the death of the person in the photo. If your order is one of those, this is your address and the answer is a record that comes down. Updates go to docverify1@gmail.com, and an update leaves the page up. Not guilty, dismissal, acquittal, exoneration, pardon, nolle prosequi, adjudication withheld and no file are all filed there under favorable dispositions. So are non-favorable dispositions, which is the path if you finished probation, served the time or satisfied the fines. The wrong address asks for the wrong outcome , and nothing on either side reroutes you. If you have both a dismissal and an expungement order, send the expungement to the removal address . If all you have is the dismissal, the update is what's on offer and it's still worth filing. Get a document that clears their bar For a removal, the policy wants court documentation signed by a judge and sealed by the court and legible . That's three conditions, not a choice of three. A docket printout, a plain-paper copy, or a screenshot of the online case portal is none of them. Order a certified, sealed copy from the clerk of the court that issued the order and wait for it before you send anything. For a family member who has died, it's a certified copy of the death certificate, signed by the proper authority and legible , to the same removal address. Order the certified copy from vital records rather than sending the one already in the file at home. Two of the four paths never name a judge. The non-favorable update asks only that court satisfaction documents must be signed by the court and be legible , and the death certificate has to be signed by the proper authority. The judge's signature is stated only for expungement-type removals and for favorable-disposition updates. Scan at full resolution and open the file before you attach it , because legibility is the thing they check first and the thing they never write to you about. Send one plain email and nothing else There is no form and no portal. Open your mail, address it to the right one of the two, attach the document, and put your Mugshots.com ID and the full URL of your page in the body. That is the entire submission. No account, no upload page, no fee , and nothing to buy first. Keep the message flat and procedural. The policy reserves the right to refuse service for abusive behavior and warns that hostile emails may disqualify you from the Record Maintenance program entirely. One short paragraph saying who you are, which record it is, and what the attachment shows. Don't route this through the contact form. mugshots.com/contact is a general inquiry channel, every field on it is required except the optional attorney bar number, down to your street address and phone number, and below the Submit button it reserves the right to publish any communication sent by you, your agent or your attorney. The removal request belongs in email, with the document attached. Mark ten business days, then send it again The policy says the process can take up to 10 business days , handled first come first serve, with no guarantee of timeliness. Put the date in your calendar and go look at your own page when it arrives , because there is no acknowledgment, no ticket number and no status page to check. The 48 hours on their homepage is not your timeline. That number belongs to the copyright notice for content owners whose material got republished. Record maintenance is the ten business days, and nothing shortens it. If the page is still up, resend to the same address with a cleaner, higher-resolution scan . Silently discarded documents are the most likely reason a request died, and a clean resend costs you ten minutes. There is no published appeal, no second reviewer and no escalation path , so the resend is the whole move. If anybody asks you to pay, stop Mugshots.com cannot charge you for this. The policy states that Mugshots.com does not charge for removing or updating records, and the homepage notice says they do not accept payment for removal of arrest information or booking photographs. Anyone selling you a Mugshots.com removal is selling you an email you can send yourself in ten minutes. Their own site policies page still carries a Publishing License Agreement offering a paid license to Halt Publication (Unpublish) one arrest record, stamped Last updated: 9/02/2013. It contradicts the current free policy and you should not act on it or pay it. unpublisharrest.com, the paid removal site named in California's 2018 complaint, now loads a Chilean medical uniform store. In California, a payment demand from the site that published the photo is unlawful and it gives you a claim. Civil Code 1798.91.1 makes it an unlawful practice for a publisher to solicit, require or accept payment to remove, correct or refrain from publishing a booking photo. Each payment is a separate violation , and you can sue for the greater of $1,000 per violation or your actual damages, plus costs and reasonable attorney's fees, in the county where you live. The statute reaches the publisher, not a service you hire to do the filing for you. Report it either way. The California Attorney General's 2018 release on Mugshots.com tells you to file a police report locally so you have documentation, then to contact the AG's eCrime Unit at eCrimeUnit@doj.ca.gov if the booking photo was taken in California or you were in California when you asked to have it de-published. Out of state, it routes complaints to IC3 . What this does not do Google will not de-index the Mugshots.com page for you. Its private information removal policy covers your address, phone and email, confidential government IDs, bank and card numbers, pictures of your signature or ID, and private records like medical records. Arrest records and booking photos are not on that list , so for Mugshots.com, which does not charge, removal at the source is the only lever you have. If a copy of the same booking photo is sitting on a site that does demand payment to take it down, Google has a separate route: its policy on sites with exploitative removal practices will consider de-indexing a URL when you are the subject, the site is not a business review site, and the site requires payment for removal. If the Mugshots.com page is already gone and the search result is still there, the tool is Google's Refresh outdated content . Choose Request refresh , put the URL of the dead page on the Page tab, and hit Submit. Wait until the page is actually gone before you file, because if the mugshot still loads there is nothing for Google to refresh. Nothing here expunges anything. Taking a booking photo off Mugshots.com doesn't seal or expunge the county's record, and it doesn't reach the copy sitting on any other mugshot site or people-search page. Search your name again in a month , and work whatever's left one site at a time. On this page Get your Mugshots.com ID out of the URL Pick the email address by what your paperwork says Get a document that clears their bar Send one plain email and nothing else Mark ten business days, then send it again If anybody asks you to pay, stop What this does not do Written by Drew Chapin → Updated 2026-09-08 Rather not do this yourself? Content Removal → Related guides How to remove arrest records from Google → Reputation management after an arrest → Mugshots.com is one page, and it's rarely the only one Send the Mugshots.com email yourself today, because it's free and it takes one sitting. When the same booking photo is sitting on other sites, or when all Mugshots.com will give you is an update, our Content Removal service is $499 to $1,999 per case and we chase every copy we can reach, one site at a time. Have us do it. Everything above, filed for you, chased for you, and reported back. One flat fee. See the service → Every guide we publish is free and ungated. Browse all of them , see what we do and what it costs , or read why we built this company . Written by Drew Chapin , who ran all of this on his own name first. © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## How to remove your record from CaseMine
URL: https://discoverability.co/guides/how-to-remove-your-record-from-casemine/

Home / Guides / Court record removal: what actually comes down Guide How to remove your record from CaseMine You searched your name, a CaseMine page came back carrying your court case, and you want it gone. CaseMine has no removal form and no portal , so the whole job is one email you write yourself . Start by collecting the exact URL of every CaseMine page about you, because the policy won't act on a name alone and nothing else in the email works without them. What you get is a de-index, not a delete CaseMine calls this de-indexing , and it's narrower than it sounds. The judgment stays live on the platform at the same URL , and the block covers your name search page, not the judgment page . If the opinion itself is what ranks for your name, a granted request doesn't touch it. What you send is URLs, and nothing else One email to support@casemine.com carrying the exact judgment URL for every page you want gone . The policy requires the link, so a name by itself isn't a request. Attach a sealing, expungement or protective order if you have one. Send no ID, no Social Security number, no date of birth and no money. If anyone asks you for those in CaseMine's name, it isn't CaseMine . What stops it is the family-law gate The only ground CaseMine publishes for a de-index is specific cases like matrimonial disputes and child custody , and that's the whole written gate. A fraud judgment, a DUI appeal, a discipline case or an employment suit sits outside it, and a carefully written request still gets refused on policy. Anything past de-indexing needs a court order . Collect the exact judgment URLs first Search your name on www.casemine.com and open every result that's actually about you. Judgment pages sit at www.casemine.com/judgement/us/ followed by a long string of letters and numbers, and the exact URL is what the policy requires . Copy each one into a list before you write anything. Slow down here if you have a common name . The results will mix you in with other people, and sending someone else's case weakens the whole request . Open each page and check the parties against your own case before you add it to the list. Decide now whether you want your name on the public list CaseMine has implemented granted de-indexes by adding name-search lines to a public file anyone can open, at www.casemine.com/robots.txt . Load that file now, before you decide anything, and read what's already in it. It carries 95 of those lines , and when we checked in September 2026 it was byte-identical to the version from December 2025. Then search your own name in quotes and look at the results you have today. Decide which you'd rather live with, the CaseMine page or a line in that file , before you send anything. Send one email to support@casemine.com List the exact URLs, say you're requesting de-indexing , and give your ground in a sentence or two. Put your name and the words de-indexing request in the subject line , and keep that same subject on every follow-up, because it's the only routing there is. Screenshot the policy page before you hit send. It's at www.casemine.com/home/judgment-hosting-and-takedown-policy-india, and that screenshot plus a copy of your sent email is the whole file you'll have if you ever need to show what the rule said the day you filed. Resend if nothing comes back Don't sit waiting on a confirmation. There's no ticket number, no status page and no published appeal , and CaseMine publishes no decision window for a takedown . What it does publish, in its privacy policy, is a commitment to respond to requests within 30 days , at the same address you wrote to. Give it those 30 days. If nothing comes back, resend the same email unchanged and copy hello@casemine.com , the second address CaseMine publishes for data requests. Keep the subject line identical so it routes itself again. Verify it yourself, because approved isn't fixed A confirmation email proves nothing. Run three checks in a browser. Search your name on Google, search it again on www.casemine.com , then load every judgment URL you sent and see whether the page is still sitting there. Nothing in CaseMine's published policy promises a suppression lasts , so put a reminder in your calendar the day you send the email and run the same three checks every three months . If the answer is no, here's what still works A court order is the only bar CaseMine names , so that's the escalation: an order directing removal, emailed as a PDF to the same address. Don't buy one just for this. CaseMine is based in India, its terms put any dispute under Indian law, and a US order doesn't automatically bind it. Skip two arguments that go nowhere: a DMCA notice and a privacy claim . CaseMine answers both on its own policy page before you send them, and there's no CCPA or CPRA section in its privacy policy to point at either. The GDPR route is real, and only if you're in the EU or the UK. CaseMine names Euverify Ltd as its Article 27 representative at gdpr@euverify.com , and that's a genuine lever if you're covered. If you're in the US, writing to it does nothing. What none of this changes Nothing you send CaseMine touches the court's own record. The docket stays where it is, the opinion stays in the public file, and a de-index is not a sealing and not an expungement . If you want the underlying record sealed, that's a filing in the court that made it, not an email to a website. CaseMine is one result, not the problem. Before you call this done, search the case name itself and write down every other site carrying the same opinion. Each one takes its own request, to its own address , and clearing CaseMine on its own moves one line on a page full of them. On this page Collect the exact judgment URLs first Decide now whether you want your name on the public list Send one email to support@casemine.com Resend if nothing comes back Verify it yourself, because approved isn't fixed If the answer is no, here's what still works What none of this changes Written by Drew Chapin → Updated 2026-09-08 Rather not do this yourself? Court Record Removal → Related guides How to remove your record from Justia → How to remove your record from CourtListener → When CaseMine is one of several. Send the CaseMine email yourself. The work is the URL list and the re-checks every three months, and it stays yours to keep doing. When the same opinion is also sitting on Justia, CourtListener and vLex, our Court Record Removal service is $199, one time , and we take the filing and the follow-up off your desk. Have us do it. Everything above, filed for you, chased for you, and reported back. One flat fee. See the service → Every guide we publish is free and ungated. Browse all of them , see what we do and what it costs , or read why we built this company . Written by Drew Chapin , who ran all of this on his own name first. © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## How to remove your record from Justia
URL: https://discoverability.co/guides/how-to-remove-your-record-from-justia/

Home / Guides / Court record removal: what actually comes down Guide How to remove your record from Justia You searched your name and a Justia page carrying your case came back. Justia runs a free request that blocks the page from search engines , it's four fields long, and it needs no ID, no case number and no lawyer. It won't delete the page, and nothing you send Justia touches the court's own file. Start by collecting the addresses, because the form asks for links and nothing else. What you actually get Justia will block the page from search engines. It won't delete it. Their policy says so in writing. The page keeps its address and stays live, so anyone holding the link still reaches it, and what you're asking for is that it should stop coming up on your name. What you have to send Four things, and that's the whole ask: the exact Justia URLs you want blocked , a comment, your name, and your email. No government ID, no case number, no court order, and no fee. Justia asks for links, so give it links. Paste the full addresses, one per line, instead of describing the case. What gets you refused Asking Justia to delete it when you don't hold a court order. Justia won't fully remove a court record that isn't under seal, and a CCPA or state privacy deletion demand is a guaranteed no on a court record. Ask for the search engine block instead. That's the request they'll consider. Get the exact URLs first Search your full name in quotes, then your name plus the case caption, and copy every Justia address that comes back . You're about to paste these into a form, so copy the whole link rather than writing down a case number. Read your own URL before you send it. Justia's block list is a public file, so if your full name sits inside the address, decide whether you want that trade before you file. While you're looking, write down who else holds the first page of results. If CourtListener, UniCourt or the court's own portal outranks Justia on your name, blocking Justia alone moves nothing anyone will notice. Send the request at support.justia.com Go to support.justia.com and pick the category for blocking a Justia link from search engines . It names court dockets, judicial opinions, trademarks and patents, so you'll know you've got the right one. You get a field for the links you want blocked, a Comments box that's required, your name, your email, and a Send Request button. Paste every URL you collected, one per line . In the Comments box, say the pages carry your name and you're asking for the search engine block. Then send it. There's no fee and no paid expedite. Expect silence, and don't resend Nobody can give you a date. Justia publishes no response time for the form, and it says in writing that it can't control how long the links take to come out of the search engines after the block goes on. Justia's own language is that reasonable accommodation will be made upon written request , which isn't a promise. Silence is a normal outcome here, and it isn't a cue to send the request again. Check the block yourself Open the robots.txt file for the subdomain your own page sits on and look for a line matching your URL. A docket means dockets.justia.com/robots.txt ; an opinion, a trademark or a patent means that subdomain's own file, and the docket file will never carry it. Checked on September 8, 2026, the docket file listed no blocked URLs at all , and an empty file isn't proof your own request failed. Then search your name again in a few weeks, and again in a few months. A result still sitting there isn't proof you were ignored, and a block that went on once can come off later, so re-check yours instead of assuming it held. If it doesn't move, the lever is at the courthouse Justia points you there itself: if you want the information deleted, contact the court directly, or hire an attorney to petition the court to seal it . That's the only route that produces an actual deletion, and the work happens at the courthouse. An expungement order doesn't automatically bind Justia. Send it to them once you have one, and don't treat the page as gone until you've looked at it yourself. If the court won't seal it, there's no legal lever left to pull. No US law gets a truthful public court record taken down, so the work shifts to what people find above it. What this never does Nothing you send Justia seals your case or expunges it. The clerk's file stays exactly as it is, and every other site that already copied the record keeps its copy. You're moving one search result, and only that one. Don't send Justia an FCRA dispute. That letter belongs at a background check company selling a report with your case in it. On this page Get the exact URLs first Send the request at support.justia.com Expect silence, and don't resend Check the block yourself If it doesn't move, the lever is at the courthouse What this never does Written by Drew Chapin → Updated 2026-09-08 Rather not do this yourself? Court Record Removal → Related guides How to remove your record from CourtListener → How to remove your record from UniCourt → When Justia isn't the only site carrying it Send the Justia request yourself, it's free and it's four fields. The cost is everything after it: re-checking whether the block held, then running the same errand at CourtListener and UniCourt. Court Record Removal is $199, one time , and we take that whole list off your desk. Have us do it. Everything above, filed for you, chased for you, and reported back. One flat fee. See the service → Every guide we publish is free and ungated. Browse all of them , see what we do and what it costs , or read why we built this company . Written by Drew Chapin , who ran all of this on his own name first. © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## How to remove your record from Trellis
URL: https://discoverability.co/guides/how-to-remove-your-record-from-trellis/

Home / Guides / Court record removal: what actually comes down Guide How to remove your record from Trellis Trellis removes public, logged-out access to a docket page carrying your name for free, and you don't need a court order to ask . The request is a link sitting on the docket page itself, so finding your case comes first. The form behind it wants your name, an email address and a written explanation of why the record should come off. Every URL with your name on it is a separate request. What you actually get Public, logged-out access to the record is removed, and Trellis asks search engines not to index it. Trellis does this as a courtesy and can refuse: it says it has no legal obligation to redact anything absent a court order sealing the record. The case isn't deleted, sealed or expunged, and nothing changes at the courthouse or on the county portal. Closing a case off across Trellis and every other legal research site takes a court order. What you have to send No court order. The upload field at the bottom of the form is optional on this route, and an empty one doesn't sink the request. What you do have to produce is the written explanation, plus, if you're arguing physical safety or identity theft, the police report or credit-company letter that backs it up. What stops it working Starting anywhere but your own docket page. Trellis only takes a redaction request pressed from the URL you want redacted, and it doesn't process requests sent by email. Find the case, open the docket, and press the link on that page. Open your docket page and press Request Redaction Search your name on trellis.law, open the docket page carrying your case, and scroll to the bottom right corner . The Request Redaction link sits there, and pressing it from the page you want redacted is the only way in, which is exactly what Trellis's redaction instructions tell you to do. If your name is on more than one docket, collect every Trellis URL before you start . Each one needs its own submission and its own written explanation. There's no bulk option and no way to name several cases in one request. Fill in the form Four things: your name, your email address, whether the records are about you, and why you want them redacted. That's the whole form. The court-order upload sits at the bottom and it's optional on this route, so leave it empty if you don't have one. The explanation is the only part you control , and it has to substantiate the request. Say who you are, name the record, and state the concrete harm: an employer running a search, a landlord, someone using the docket to find where you live. Keep it to facts a stranger could check, and don't build it around a privacy law. Attach whatever backs the harm you're describing. For physical safety, that's a police report or a court order about the threat. For identity theft, a police report or a letter from a credit reporting company. If you're a judge, a public official or in law enforcement, attach those credentials instead. And if you already hold an order sealing the record, attach it, because Trellis processes that one immediately. What happens after you send it Trellis publishes no turnaround. Requests get worked in the order they arrive, review runs a minimum of 48 hours, and support gets in touch if it needs more from you. There's no status page to refresh while you wait. Once a request is approved, public logged-out access to that URL is removed and Trellis asks search engines not to index it, and Google is the slow part . Trellis puts re-ingestion of a redacted URL at up to four to six weeks and doesn't control that window. Check the URL yourself at the end of it instead of watching your search results every day. If the URL is dead and the result is still there, the next request goes to Google , not back to Trellis, and our guide to removing court records from Google covers that one. If the record itself is wrong, start at the court A redaction hides an accurate record. If the docket has an error in it, fix that at the issuing court first , then send Trellis the notice of errata and the corrected record. Trellis won't change a public record the court hasn't changed, so a correction that skips the courthouse goes nowhere. What a redaction won't fix A redaction reaches trellis.law and nothing else. Search your case caption in quotes today and count how many other sites carry the same docket, because each one is its own request with its own form and its own rules. Trellis never charges for this , and it warns about third-party sites that sell the free request for a fee. So if trellis.law is the only site carrying your case, file it yourself and you don't need us. What it costs you is the work: one submission and one fresh explanation per URL, an open-ended wait with no deadline, then up to six weeks for search engines after that. On this page Open your docket page and press Request Redaction Fill in the form What happens after you send it If the record itself is wrong, start at the court What a redaction won't fix Written by Drew Chapin → Updated 2026-09-08 Rather not do this yourself? Court Record Removal → Related guides How to remove your record from UniCourt → How to remove court records from Google → When Trellis isn't the only copy If the same case also sits on UniCourt, the county portal or a news story, each of those is its own request with its own rules. Court record removal is $199, one time : every legal aggregator we can reach, plus twelve months of re-submission. You give us the facts once and we file all of them. Have us do it. Everything above, filed for you, chased for you, and reported back. One flat fee. See the service → Every guide we publish is free and ungated. Browse all of them , see what we do and what it costs , or read why we built this company . Written by Drew Chapin , who ran all of this on his own name first. © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## How to remove your record from UniCourt
URL: https://discoverability.co/guides/how-to-remove-your-record-from-unicourt/

Home / Guides / Court record removal: what actually comes down Guide How to remove your record from UniCourt UniCourt takes a free redaction request and it's real, but it's narrow. Only a party to the record, their legal guardian or fiduciary, or an attorney representing a party can file it , and it weighs four factors: sealed or expunged, physical danger, identity theft, or harm to a minor. Most ordinary civil cases carry none of those, and UniCourt says the factors aren't exclusive and asks you to submit a request anyway . Check that you're one of the three people who can file, because that's the part that's actually a gate. De-indexed, not deleted A granted request pulls the UniCourt page out of Google and Bing. It doesn't delete the court's record. UniCourt's policy says in writing that a redacted record may still be publicly and privately available in other repositories and can only be sealed by a court order . Send the stamped order A sealed or expunged claim needs the conformed court order , the stamped copy from the clerk, uploaded with the form. Physical-harm, minor, and identity-theft claims need a police report, a court order, or comparable documentation. UniCourt only considers requests whose documentation provides compelling evidence as to why a record should be redacted. Four factors, not four gates UniCourt weighs four factors : sealed or expunged, physical danger, identity theft, harm to a minor. Its policy says the list isn't exclusive and to submit a request for review even if yours doesn't fall within one, though not wanting it online isn't one of the four . Copy the URL, and count how many there are The form takes one record URL at a time , so start by finding all of them. Open the UniCourt page that came up on your name, copy the address out of the browser bar, then search the site for your name and for the case caption and list every other hit. There's no account-level or name-level opt-out here, so a case sitting on three UniCourt URLs is three separate requests. Keep that list where you'll find it in six months. You'll file one request per URL, you'll re-check each one after a decision, and you'll check them again months later. Paste the URLs into a note with today's date beside each one. Check that you're one of the three people who can file Eligibility is the gate, and it has exactly three slots. UniCourt's public records policy says it "only considers requests submitted by a party to the public record, a legal guardian or fiduciary of a party to the record, or an attorney representing a party to the record." If you're the person named in the caption, you're in. A reputation firm isn't on that list , so you sign and submit the request yourself, or your attorney of record does it for you. We can build the packet and hand it over ready to send. The form asks your relationship to the record before it asks anything else, and attorneys add a bar number and bar state . Check the four factors, then send it anyway UniCourt weighs four factors , quoted from its policy: "(1) Has the record been sealed or expunged by a court order? (2) Does the record expose the requestor to an increased risk of physical harm? (3) Is the requestor a victim of identity theft, and is the record a result of this theft? (4) Does the record concern and adversely affect a minor?" The list isn't exclusive, but there's no listed ground for simply not wanting the case online . If none of the four fits, and for most business disputes, divorces, debt collection suits, employment claims, landlord-tenant matters and civil judgments none of them does, send the request anyway . UniCourt's policy says the factors are not exclusive and asks you to submit a request for review even when yours doesn't fall within one, and it charges nothing to file or to appeal. A motion to seal or expunge in the court that heard the case is the route that reaches the source , and it's where you go when the request is denied or when the court's own file is what needs moving. UniCourt's own policy says the record can only be sealed by a court order. It's the work your attorney does, and you come back to UniCourt holding the order. Get the document before you touch the form Get the conformed order from the clerk first, or the police report if you're filing on physical harm, identity theft, or harm to a minor. Upload it. Don't describe it. UniCourt only considers requests that provide all of the required information and supporting documentation, and it decides on what you attach. Bring the stamped order, not your memory of what the judge said. A complainant told the BBB in August 2026 that a sealed and dismissed divorce case was online, and UniCourt's answer was that the docket wasn't sealed. If you can't put your hands on a copy today, that's the errand to run first. Skip the CCPA request form . It's open to California residents only, it wants a government ID upload, and its own page says the CCPA does not apply to court records . The redaction form doesn't ask for your ID, and it's the one that reaches this page. Fill in the form and send it, free The Public Records Redaction Request asks for the record URL, your relationship to it, your name, a full mailing address, an email and a confirming email, a phone number and a confirming phone number, your country and state of residence, whether the record has been sealed or expunged , your stated reason, and the upload. Attorneys add the bar number and bar state, and the last box is a declaration under penalty of perjury . It's free at every stage, including the appeal , and UniCourt says so on its own policy page. It adds that if a third-party company is charging you to redact a record UniCourt published, you can submit the request for free directly. Nobody should be billing you for this form , us included. Wait 30 days, then about 30 more UniCourt states it typically decides a request within 30 days and communicates the decision in writing. A grant de-indexes the URL, and UniCourt estimates that lands within about 30 days after the decision while saying plainly that it doesn't control the search engines. Budget roughly 60 days from send to clean result, and expect cached snippets in between. Those are UniCourt's stated targets, not measured outcomes, and it publishes no approval rate and no median turnaround . Set your own reminders and re-check the URL at 60, 90, and 180 days . One complainant on that same BBB page said removed items came back months later. Appeal within 30 days, and know what a grant leaves You can appeal within 30 days of the decision, and the appeal has to carry substantive new documentation. UniCourt states that appeals without it will be denied and that all appeals are final. A granted request de-indexes a UniCourt URL. It doesn't seal, expunge, or change the court's own record. If the court's own file is what you need moved, the motion to seal is the work, and nothing you send UniCourt substitutes for it. One request per URL, and the clock runs about 60 days on each. Then you search the caption again at 60, 90, and 180 days and re-file whatever came back. That's what this costs you in time, and it repeats on any other site carrying the case. On this page Copy the URL, and count how many there are Check that you're one of the three people who can file Check the four factors, then send it anyway Get the document before you touch the form Fill in the form and send it, free Wait 30 days, then about 30 more Appeal within 30 days, and know what a grant leaves Written by Drew Chapin → Updated 2026-09-08 Rather not do this yourself? Court Record Removal → Related guides How to remove your record from CourtListener → How to remove your record from CaseMine → How to remove court records from Google → We'll build the packet, you sign it Court Record Removal is $199, one time. We find every aggregator carrying your case, build the UniCourt packet for your signature, file everywhere we're allowed to file, and re-check for twelve months. Have us do it. Everything above, filed for you, chased for you, and reported back. One flat fee. See the service → Every guide we publish is free and ungated. Browse all of them , see what we do and what it costs , or read why we built this company . Written by Drew Chapin , who ran all of this on his own name first. © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## How to remove your record from vLex and Fastcase
URL: https://discoverability.co/guides/how-to-remove-your-record-from-vlex/

Home / Guides / Court record removal: what actually comes down Guide How to remove your record from vLex and Fastcase Mail contentremovals@clio.com with every URL you found, the case title, and your name exactly as it's printed in the document. That one address covers vLex and Fastcase , which run on the same platform under Clio now. A docket is different : those go through the Docket Alarm form, which decides in about five business days. Send yours today, then file the Google request once the page changes. What you get A Docket Alarm docket gets suppressed : the page comes down, they email you to confirm, and the court's own record stays where it is. A published opinion on vLex usually stays up , and vLex will only tell you it'll respond as quickly as possible , so there's no date to hold it to. What you have to send Send every URL, the case title, and your name exactly as it's printed in the document , plus one sentence naming the law you say requires removal. If a court sealed, expunged or vacated the case, attach the certified order . vLex publishes no document checklist and asks for no ID . What stops it Expect a refusal on a published opinion where you're a named party, because vLex is under no US legal obligation to take one down. Docket Alarm says no in writing too, to attorneys trying to disassociate from cases they worked on , to matters with strong public interest, and to cases with corporations on both sides. If yours involves a minor, a divorce or social security , say so in the reason field: those get suppressed automatically. List every URL before you write anything Search your exact case caption in quotes and open every result. The same document surfaces on vlex.com, us.vlex.com and case-law.vlex.com , and those are separate pages that need naming separately. Copy each address into a list , and mark which ones sit on docketalarm.com , because those take a different route and you'll handle them second. Don't go hunting for a Fastcase page or a Fastcase address. Fastcase research runs on the vLex platform now, so whatever you found through Fastcase is a vLex URL and belongs in the same list. There's no vLex form, so don't go looking for one Search for a vLex removal form and you'll land on a page titled Notice of Intent to Request Redaction . It's a US Court of Federal Claims litigation template sitting in vLex's forms library, and filling it in sends your request nowhere. The Anonymise Documents feature in vLex's AI tool is no use either: it only redacts files you upload yourself. The email is the whole process. Send the email Address it to contentremovals@clio.com . In the body, list every URL from your list , the case title, your name exactly as it appears in the document, and a specific statement of the legal provision you say compels removal in your jurisdiction. Attach the certified order if a court has sealed, expunged or vacated your case. Send it from an address you'll check , and save a copy with the date you sent it. You'll need both to follow up, and you'll need the URL list again for the Google step. Dockets go through the Docket Alarm form Go to docketalarm.com/Remove and fill in first name, last name, email, phone, the full case URL, and a reason capped at 300 characters . It asks for no ID and no court order , it doesn't charge, and it decides within about five business days and emails you when it suppresses a page. One link per submission , so five URLs means five trips through the form. Write your 300 characters once in a text file and paste the same wording each time, and keep a copy of what you sent . Clear the Google result Once a page returns a 404 or changes, file a Google Outdated Content request for every URL that moved . You'll need to be signed in to a Google account to use the tool. Without this step, the removal you just won stays invisible to the next person who searches your name. Budget weeks, not days. Search snippets can stay live for several weeks after a page comes down, so file the request, then check your name again in a month. If nothing comes back Wait two weeks, then resend the same email to contentremovals@clio.com, with the same URL list and the same certified order attached. Change nothing except the opening line, which should say it's a second request and name the date of the first. If you're an EU or UK data subject, you've got a stronger route. Send it to dpo@vlex.com as a GDPR Article 17 erasure request , cite the article by number, and copy the Clio address. vLex's controller sits in Barcelona , so a refusal is appealable to the Spanish data protection authority. European readers should run the Google de-indexing request at the same time , not after vLex answers. The index is the softer target , and waiting on vLex alone can burn months. What this doesn't fix, and what it costs you Nothing you send Clio seals or expunges your case. The court's own record stays exactly as it is, and the only thing that changes that is a motion to seal or redact filed at the court . Winning here also changes nothing on Justia, CourtListener, CaseMine, Leagle or PacerMonitor . Each one is a separate request to a separate operator , with its own address and its own format, and you file them one at a time. The email is the short part. The rest is the caption search across every vLex domain, one Docket Alarm submission per URL with a 300-character reason written out each time, a Google request for every page that changes, and then the same procedure again at every other database carrying your case . On this page List every URL before you write anything There's no vLex form, so don't go looking for one Send the email Dockets go through the Docket Alarm form Clear the Google result If nothing comes back What this doesn't fix, and what it costs you Written by Drew Chapin → Updated 2026-09-08 Rather not do this yourself? Court Record Removal → Related guides How to remove your record from Justia → How to remove your record from CourtListener → How to remove your record from CaseMine → When vLex isn't the only site carrying it Send the vLex email yourself. When the same case also sits on Justia, CourtListener, CaseMine and PacerMonitor , court record removal is $199, one time : every legal aggregator we can reach, plus twelve months of re-submission. Have us do it. Everything above, filed for you, chased for you, and reported back. One flat fee. See the service → Every guide we publish is free and ungated. Browse all of them , see what we do and what it costs , or read why we built this company . Written by Drew Chapin , who ran all of this on his own name first. © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## How to remove yourself from Spokeo: one listing at a time, and it comes back
URL: https://discoverability.co/guides/how-to-remove-yourself-from-spokeo/

Home / Guides / Personal information removal: a dozen sites, a dozen forms, and they repost Guide How to remove yourself from Spokeo: one listing at a time, and it comes back Spokeo's opt-out form is short: a profile URL and an email address , no ID and no account. What it won't do is delete you. Removal runs one listing at a time, Spokeo warns in writing that your information may reappear without notice, and nothing is submitted at all until you click the link in a confirmation email . One Spokeo-owned site is carved out of the form by name, and the form never tells you. What you get: suppression, not deletion Spokeo hides the listing sitting at that one URL. The underlying record stays in their system , and their own opt-out page tells you your information may reappear on Spokeo in the future without notice and that you should regularly check for additional listings. You're switching off an address, not getting deleted, and Spokeo describes doing it as a courtesy rather than an obligation. What you hand over: an email address No ID upload, no phone code, no account, no date of birth, no last four of anything. The form takes a profile URL and an email you can actually open, behind a reCAPTCHA. The catch is that URL: you have to run Spokeo's own people search on yourself to get one. Thatsthem.com, which Spokeo owns, asks for far more than Spokeo does. What stops it: the confirmation email Until you click the link Spokeo emails you, nothing has been submitted. The form says so directly. There's no error, no reminder and no second notice, so a confirmation that lands in spam kills the request in silence while you believe you're finished. Use an inbox you actually check, and check the spam folder before you close the tab. Find every listing that's you and copy its URL The form doesn't accept a name. It accepts a profile URL and nothing else , so start at spokeo.com and search yourself by name, phone number, email, address or username. Open every result that's actually you and copy the full address out of the browser bar. A Spokeo profile address ends in a slash, the letter p, and a run of digits, and that p number is the listing ID you're removing. One person routinely has several listings. Spokeo's page says it plainly: you may have multiple listings, each one is identified by a unique URL, and each must be opted out individually. A middle initial versus none, a maiden name, a prior address, all get their own page. There is no control anywhere that removes every record for a person, so collect the URLs into a list first and work the list. Some listings only surface behind a paid result. Spokeo accepts the payment-flow address instead , and shows that format as an example on the form itself: the purchase URL carrying your name and the listing number. If you can get the profile to appear at any address, that address is what you paste. Fill in the two fields at spokeo.com/optout Open spokeo.com/optout and scroll. The form is not near the top of the page. Above it sits a wall of brand copy about controlling your data and using data for good, and the block you want is roughly halfway down, headed Opt Out Your Listing from Spokeo. There are exactly two fields. Paste the profile URL into the URL box, put an email address you can open into the Email Address box, clear the reCAPTCHA, and click OPT OUT. No name, no street address, no date of birth, no account to create. That part is actually two minutes. Click the link in the email or nothing happened Spokeo's wording on the form is the instruction: to complete this process, we will send you a confirmation email, please click the link in the email. That click is the submission. Everything before it is a draft sitting in a browser. Open the email, click through, and if it hasn't arrived within a few minutes look in spam and promotions before you resubmit. The clock starts at the click, not at the button. Spokeo states on the same page that your opt-out request should be processed in 24 to 48 hours depending on the nature of the request and the amount of data. Spokeo publishes no expiry on that confirmation link, so don't leave it sitting for a week and assume it still works. Then repeat the whole loop for the next URL on your list. Thatsthem.com is carved out and needs its own request Spokeo's privacy policy excludes one site by name. The opt-out covers Spokeo.com and other Spokeo-operated websites excluding Thatsthem.com, in Spokeo's own wording . Thatsthem is a Spokeo-owned people-search site, so anyone who files at spokeo.com/optout and stops there is still fully listed, and nothing on the Spokeo form mentions it. Its form is at thatsthem.com/optout and it's the inverse of Spokeo's: full name, street address, city, state, ZIP, email and phone, all required. You're handing a data broker your current address to get removed from it. The page states requests are typically processed within 72 hours and that you'll receive a confirmation email once complete. Four more Spokeo properties, and only one of them costs you anything. freepeopledirectory.com/optout serves its own separate one-field form , so paste your URL there too rather than trusting that the Spokeo form reached it. Anywho.com and Peoplewin.com both redirect straight into the Spokeo form, so they're already handled. Family.me has no working opt-out page at all, and that's the case for calling: Spokeo's California registration says its Customer Care agents will complete an opt-out request across all of Spokeo's public websites, on 1 (888) 558-9004, listed on spokeo.com/contact as open 7AM to 5PM PT, seven days a week. A court record will not come off this form Spokeo excludes court records from the opt-out entirely. Its policy is that Spokeo does not allow individuals to opt out, meaning suppress display, of court records which pertain to them, unless an Order of Expunction or Sealing is provided. If the thing frightening you is an arrest or a case rather than your address, the form on the opt-out page will not touch it and no amount of resubmitting changes that. The route is a court order emailed to expungement@spokeo.com. Spokeo says it will suppress or delete only those records specifically noted in the order, and it makes a point that an expunged conviction leaves the associated arrest record live unless the order covers the arrest too. Read the order you were given before you send it, because that document is the whole request. California residents: file once at DROP DROP is the only route here that repeats itself. California's Delete Request and Opt-out Platform takes one request and carries it to every data broker registered with the state, Spokeo included, so it isn't a per-URL chase and it isn't limited to the sites you managed to find. You verify California residency through the state's identity gateway, build a profile with the names and details you want matched, and receive an 8-digit DROP ID to track it. Data brokers were legally required to begin processing these requests on August 1, 2026. They have up to 90 days to report how they processed yours, and after that they must re-check and delete new matching data at least every 45 days. That 45-day sweep is the part worth having , because it's the only mechanism that answers Spokeo's own warning that you'll reappear, and it's a legal duty rather than the courtesy Spokeo calls its opt-out. Outside California there's no equivalent platform yet, so everywhere else you're back to the form and your own calendar. Put a date in your calendar, because you'll come back Spokeo says it on the opt-out page: since it continually receives new and updated records from public sources, your information may reappear in the future without notice , and you should regularly check Spokeo for additional listings that may appear. They publish no interval and they send no alert. The monitoring is yours. Re-search your name quarterly and opt out any URL you didn't see last time. A new listing arrives at a new address, and the request you filed months ago never covered it. Treat Spokeo as a standing chore, not a task you finish, and the same goes for Thatsthem. None of this reaches anything upstream. Spokeo's policy states it cannot remove the information from third-party public sources such as phone books, social networks or government records, so the counties and marketing files that fed the listing keep feeding it. The policy also puts Spokeo's business products outside this process, and the other people-search sites carrying the same record are separate companies with separate forms. On this page Find every listing that's you and copy its URL Fill in the two fields at spokeo.com/optout Click the link in the email or nothing happened Thatsthem.com is carved out and needs its own request A court record will not come off this form California residents: file once at DROP Put a date in your calendar, because you'll come back Written by Drew Chapin → Updated 2026-09-08 Rather not do this yourself? Personal Information Removal → Related guides Why your expunged record is still showing online → How to use Google's removal tools on a court record → When Spokeo isn't the only site carrying your address File the Spokeo request yourself today, it's free and it's two fields. Personal Information Removal is $399 , and it covers the whole broker network instead of one site, with twelve months of monitoring and re-submission, because these listings come back at a new URL and nobody tells you. Have us do it. Everything above, filed for you, chased for you, and reported back. One flat fee. See the service → Every guide we publish is free and ungated. Browse all of them , see what we do and what it costs , or read why we built this company . Written by Drew Chapin , who ran all of this on his own name first. © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## How to take down an imposter website
URL: https://discoverability.co/guides/how-to-take-down-imposter-websites/

Home / Guides / Content removal: who published it decides what comes down News and articles How to take down an imposter website Report it to the host first, not the registrar. That order is the single thing that decides whether this gets fixed or goes nowhere , because a host can pull one page while a registrar can only kill the whole domain and usually won't. Before you write to anyone, decide which of three problems you actually have, because each one goes to a different desk and the wrong desk closes your ticket. What actually comes down The host is the only party that can remove a single page. A registrar acts on the whole domain or not at all, and for a copy that isn't stealing logins the registrar has no contractual duty to act at all. UDRP is the only route that hands you the domain , and URS just suspends it with the other side still on the registration. Google de-indexing takes away the search listing, not the site. What it costs you to file The host, the registrar and Google are free and want evidence instead of money : dated screenshots of both the imposter page and your real one, each with the browser address bar visible, plus proof you own the brand or the copyright. A DMCA notice carries a statement under penalty of perjury signed by you. A WIPO UDRP filing is $1,500 for one to five domains before a single panelist, and you have to create a WIPO Account before you can pay it. What stops it working Misfiling a copy as abuse. The registrar contract defines abuse as a closed list: malware, botnets, phishing, pharming, and spam only when the spam delivers one of the other four. A clone that copies your look and takes nothing is not on that list , so the registrar has no duty to suspend it and ICANN has nothing to enforce. Send that one to the host as copyright, or to UDRP as a domain dispute. Decide which of three problems this is Make this call before you open a single form , because everything after it changes. If the site puts up a fake login or payment page and collects credentials or card numbers, that's phishing, and phishing is the one thing every registrar is contractually obliged to act on. If it copies your text, images and layout but harvests nothing, that's a copyright problem and it belongs to the hosting provider . If the domain name itself imitates your name or your brand, that's a domain dispute headed for UDRP or URS. Check the ending on the domain in the same minute. ICANN's reach covers generic endings like .com, .net and .shop and stops dead at country codes, so .us, .io, .co, .eu and the rest are run by their own managers under their own rules. Look the ending up in the IANA Root Zone Database , and if it's a country code, the contact on its delegation record is your escalation route and ICANN is not. Screenshot both sites now, before anything moves. Capture the imposter page and the real page of yours it's imitating, each shot showing the browser address bar, and keep the date. Every party you are about to write to asks for exactly this, and a clone that vanishes before you captured it is a complaint you can't prove . Look up who to write to Open ICANN's registration data lookup tool , type the imposter domain into the box marked Enter a domain name or an Internet number resource (IP Network or ASN) , and press Lookup . Don't go hunting for a WHOIS service instead. The WHOIS protocol obligation for generic domains was phased out on January 28, 2025, and this tool queries RDAP, the thing that replaced it. Read three blocks off the result and ignore the rest. Registrar Information gives you the registrar's Name, its IANA ID, and an Abuse contact email and phone. Nameservers gives you hostnames that usually name the hosting provider or the CDN sitting in front of it. Under Dates , Created tells you how old the registration is, and a domain registered days ago is a fact worth putting in your report , because it separates a purpose-built fake from a real site somebody hacked. The registrar has to carry an abuse route on its own homepage too , an email address or a web form, and ICANN's advisory is explicit that a web form must not require a login to submit abuse reports . A link reading Report Abuse or Contact Us that reaches the abuse contact counts. If a registrar makes you open an account before it will hear about a fake site, that is itself a violation you can report later . Report it to the host, before the registrar This order is doctrine, not preference. The registrars' and registries' own reporting guide says the web hosting or publishing provider should always be engaged prior to contacting the registrar because they have specialized tools and granular access to address the abuse occurring on their systems . A host can delete one page. A registrar and a registry can only act at the second level, so if the copy sits on a subdomain of an otherwise real site, suspension kills that site's email and everything else on it , and the registrar will most likely notify the owner rather than pull the plug. If the nameservers point at Cloudflare, Cloudflare will not take the page down and says so plainly : it does not host content through its CDN and cannot remove content it does not host. File there anyway, because it is how you find the real host. Cloudflare forwards your complaint to the website operator and the hosting provider, provides the hosting provider with the origin IP address of the content at issue , and responds to you with additional details so you can follow up. The form is at abuse.cloudflare.com and opens on Choose an abuse type : take Copyright Infringement & DMCA Violations or Trademark Infringement for a copy of your site, and Phishing & Malware for a fake login page. If the host is GoDaddy, go to its abuse portal , which opens on Send a report to GoDaddy of abusive activity. Select a category below to get started. and gives every category its own Create Report button. Use Phishing for a fake login page and Intellectual Property Infringement for a copied one, and read that second label before you click it: it covers infringement of copyrighted or trademarked content hosted on GoDaddy's servers , so it is the right box only when GoDaddy is actually the host. Every other host runs its own form and gives its own answer , so open the abuse page for the provider your nameservers actually point at rather than assuming it works like these two. Whatever the form, name the outcome you want in plain words , the page removed or the whole site disabled, because a report that describes a problem without asking for something gets filed as a complaint. Then the registrar, with a report they can act on Send this after the host has had a real chance, and put everything about one domain into a single report . The registrars' guide is blunt about why: one report per URL will delay registrars' time of response and increase the risk of having duplicate reports blocked by registrar spam filters . Defang the addresses so nobody clicks them by accident, which means writing example[.]com rather than example.com. A registrar only owes you action when the evidence you sent is actionable , meaning it is enough on its own for them to reach a decision. Include the defanged domain and every specific URL or subdomain the copy sits on, the webhost if you know it, what happened and how to reproduce it, the date, time and jurisdiction, who is being harmed and how, screenshots of both sites with the address bar showing, whether you already contacted the host and what they said, any contact with the registrant, the age of the domain, and your full contact details. Then name the outcome : suspension, a nameserver change, a transfer lock, confidentiality. For a fake login page, add two things or it stalls : the domain, brand or business the page is mimicking, and a sample of the email or message driving traffic to it with the full headers , not a screenshot of the message body. The headers are what let a registrar tell a spoofed sender apart from the domain that actually sent it. Keep the confirmation the registrar sends back. It is required to identify the registrar, the domain names you reported and the date you submitted, and that is exactly what an escalation needs later. If no confirmation ever arrives, that failure is reportable on its own. When a registrar does act, it suspends the domain with the clientHold status code and often adds a transfer lock, and ICANN's worked examples finish in two to three business days. Treat that as an illustration and not a deadline , because ICANN says outright that it is impossible to prescribe a fixed amount of time for an action to be considered prompt. Get it out of Google while you wait This runs in parallel and it removes nothing. Nothing comes off the imposter's server. The page stays exactly where it is, and only the search listing goes. What you get is that people searching your name or your brand stop landing on the copy. Start at Report Content On Google . Pick Google Search , then Google Search again on the next screen, then answer No to Does this request relate to content generated by AI within a Google product? Choose Legal Reasons to Report Content , then Intellectual Property , then Copyright: Report unlawful use of copyright-protected work . Confirm you are the owner, pick Other as the type of work, and you land on three boxes: Identify and describe the copyrighted work , Where can we see an authorized example of the work? which takes the URL of your real page, and Location of the allegedly infringing material which takes the URLs to remove. Then Create request . Don't take the trademark branch expecting a form. Choose Trademark: Report a use of my trademark that is likely to cause confusion for Google Search and the troubleshooter stops there, telling you it only removes search listings under limited circumstances and to work with the site's webmaster instead. The copyright branch is the one that reaches a real request for a copied site, which is one more reason to lead with the copying rather than the brand. Two things to know before you send it. Some of what you put in a legal removal request may be sent to Lumen , an independent research project studying online content takedown requests, on a case-by-case assessment, though it never shares what you type into the contact fields. And you file once per product and once per path : a separate report for every Google product the copy appears in, and a policy report does not serve as legal notice , so it never stands in for the legal one. Send the host a DMCA notice Against a literal copy this is the strongest lever you have , because copied text, images and page design infringe your copyright regardless of what the domain name says and regardless of whether you own a trademark at all. Find the provider's registered agent in the Copyright Office's DMCA Designated Agent Directory and send it there. The notice has to carry all six statutory elements or it does not legally put the provider on notice. Your physical or electronic signature as the owner or an authorized agent. Identification of the copyrighted work, or a representative list if there are several on one site. Identification of the infringing material and enough information to locate it. Your contact information, meaning address, telephone and email. A statement of good faith belief that the use is not authorized by you, your agent or the law. And a statement, under penalty of perjury , that the information is accurate and that you are authorized to act for the owner. The text is 17 U.S.C. 512 . A counter notice can put the page straight back up. If the other side files one and you don't sue, the provider restores access, which is the bargain the statute makes on purpose. Send this only about material you actually own , because the perjury statement is yours and it is the one part of this whole process that carries a personal legal risk. If nothing has moved Escalate to ICANN only after the registrar has had a reasonable time and failed, only for a generic domain, and only when the harm was phishing, malware, a botnet, pharming or spam delivering one of those. ICANN's own guide says copyright violations are not covered by this route, so a clone that steals nothing has nothing here for ICANN to enforce. The form is Abuse/DNS Abuse (Registrar) , listed on ICANN's complaint page . ICANN's own filing guide flags three ways people waste the attempt: don't file it the same day you reported to the registrar , don't tick the law enforcement box unless you are law enforcement, and keep your allegation consistent, because claiming phishing to ICANN after telling the registrar it was trademark infringement buys follow-up questions instead of action. Enter the domains one at a time, and upload a .csv in the form domainname.tld with no https:// if there are more than five. Understand what that complaint can and cannot do before you spend the effort. You get a confirmation email with a case number, and ICANN enforces its contract against the registrar. It will not order the domain suspended and it will not resolve your dispute , so treat it as pressure on a registrar that ignored you rather than as a takedown route. If the domain name itself is the problem, this is where it was always going. Registrars say so themselves: without a valid court order from their own jurisdiction or the registrant's consent, a trademark complaint gets pointed at UDRP. UDRP is the one that transfers the domain to you , and a WIPO filing runs $1,500 for one to five domains before a single panelist, payable only through WIPO Pay after you create a WIPO Account. URS only exists in the endings created by ICANN's 2012 new-gTLD round, so it is off the table for a .com or a .net ; check the TLD's registry agreement before you plan one. Where it is available it is cheaper and faster and it transfers nothing: the registry suspends the name for the balance of the registration period, points it at an informational page, leaves the original registrant on the record, and the procedure states that no other remedies should be available. Its burden of proof is clear and convincing evidence, which is higher than UDRP's. If the host ignores you, go up a layer. Take the origin IP, find which network operator holds it at the regional registry that covers it, ARIN, RIPE, APNIC, LACNIC or AFRINIC, and report to that operator's abuse contact. For a country-code domain ICANN cannot help you at all : take the manager's contact off the IANA Root Zone Database and use their local policy. If money was taken from anybody, file with IC3 and the FTC and give the registrar the report number. Registrars have to staff a contact that reviews well-founded law enforcement reports of illegal activity within 24 hours, which is a far harder clock than the ordinary abuse path, and your report is what puts an agency in a position to use it. Then be honest with yourself about the last part: none of this stops them registering a new domain tomorrow and doing it again . A single UDRP can cover several domains at once and a court order is the one instrument every registrar and host honors without argument, but a takedown removes a copy, not the person making copies . On this page Decide which of three problems this is Look up who to write to Report it to the host, before the registrar Then the registrar, with a report they can act on Get it out of Google while you wait Send the host a DMCA notice If nothing has moved Written by Drew Chapin → Updated 2026-09-08 Rather not do this yourself? Content Removal → Related guides How to use Google's removal tools on a court record → The copy usually isn't the only copy File the host report yourself today, because it is free and nobody should charge you to fill in an abuse form. When the same site keeps coming back on new domains, or one job spans a host, a registrar, a CDN and Google at the same time, our Content Removal service is $499 to $1,999 per case: we work each copy against what that host's own policy actually allows, and chase the ones you haven't found yet . Have us do it. Everything above, filed for you, chased for you, and reported back. One flat fee. See the service → Every guide we publish is free and ungated. Browse all of them , see what we do and what it costs , or read why we built this company . Written by Drew Chapin , who ran all of this on his own name first. © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## Personal information removal: a dozen sites, a dozen forms, and they repost
URL: https://discoverability.co/guides/personal-information/

Home / Guides Guide hub Personal information removal: a dozen sites, a dozen forms, and they repost You found your home address on a site you'd never heard of, filed the opt-out, and it came down. Then you searched again and it was sitting on four more. These sites all build from the same public records and the same third-party suppliers , so one address becomes a dozen listings, each with its own form, its own proof rules and its own way of failing quietly. Here's the order to work them in. Hidden on the site, still in the file Every site in this category does the same thing: it stops displaying your listing and keeps the record. TruePeopleSearch says it will not remove the data from its original source . BeenVerified says information that came from an outside source was instead opted out of our services so that it would no longer be displayed . PeopleConnect says suppression does not affect whether the information will be available from other sources . You're switching listings off one at a time, not getting deleted. What it costs you to do this alone Every guide under this page is written so you can file it yourself for free, and if one site has your address you should. The cost is the repetition. A dozen separate forms, an emailed link that dies in 24 hours at FastPeopleSearch and PeopleFinders, an automated phone call at Whitepages, one record per submission at Radaris, and then the whole list again a few months later. Budget several evenings, and treat it as a standing chore. Nothing tells you when it didn't work These forms fail quietly, in three shapes. Spokeo submits nothing at all until you click the link in its confirmation email. PeopleFinders says outright that if its system cannot match the provided information to a record, the information will not be removed , and sends no rejection. And a listing that actually came down keeps its Google result for weeks while the index catches up. Check the site itself around day three, not the search result. Find every listing before you file anything Search your full name in quotes, then your name with your city, then your name with your phone number, and go to page two. Page two is where the sites you've never heard of live. Save every URL in one list, because most of these forms want the exact URL of your listing rather than a description of you. Search the variations while you're at it: a maiden name, a middle initial, the name your mail comes addressed to. One person is often several separate records on the same site , built from different spellings and old addresses, and Radaris states in its own FAQ that it only permits you to remove one record through the online process. Count your records before you start or you'll finish and still be listed. Note which listings name your relatives, your old phone numbers and the addresses you've left. Some sites treat relatives and associates as a separate request with its own form , so that's a line item on your list, not a detail you'll remember later. Get one email address and one phone number ready Almost nothing in this category wants your ID. No license upload, no selfie, no notarization , on any of these sites. What they want is proof you can open an inbox or answer a call, which means the whole job runs on one email address and one phone number you actually use. Use a real mailbox, not an alias. Radaris refuses hashed, randomized or system-generated addresses in writing, so Apple's Hide My Email, a Duck Address and a SimpleLogin alias all fail there. Whitepages places an automated call and asks you to key in a four-digit code. Expect to hand a broker one more piece of your data on the way out of its files. PeopleConnect, which runs Intelius, TruthFinder, Instant Checkmate and US Search, is the hard one: it verifies a phone number or email that already appears in the report it built on you. If that report came from an address you left years ago with a dead landline on it, the code never reaches you and you're into a manual email queue. Find that out now rather than at the last step. Intelius also takes a date of birth that can never be edited once you save it . Start with the forms that cover more than one site Not every request is one site, and the order you file in decides how much of the evening you get back. One pass at PeopleConnect's Suppression Center covers Intelius, TruthFinder, Instant Checkmate and US Search at once , so that's four listings for one form and it goes first. Whitepages says its opt-out also covers 411.com and PeopleSearch.com. The reverse is where people lose weeks. BeenVerified's form covers BeenVerified. The same company also publishes you on PeopleLooker, NeighborWho, Ownerly, NumberGuru, Bumper, PeopleSmart, ReversePhone and MoneyBot5000, each on its own domain with its own form, and it never says one request reaches the other eight. Spokeo owns Thatsthem.com and carves it out of the Spokeo form by name, so that one needs its own request too. California residents should also file once at the state's DROP platform , which is built to reach registered data brokers in a single request. File it on top of the individual forms, not instead of them, because the sites you found today are the ones you can verify yourself. Then the singles, and finish each one in a sitting The rest are one site each, and the usual failure is an unfinished request rather than a refused one. FastPeopleSearch and PeopleFinders email you a link that expires 24 hours after it's issued , and a late click drops you back at the captcha. Start a site when you have time to finish it, and check your spam folder before you close the tab. Fill each form to match the listing, not to match your life today. The record was built from an old address, so give them the old address. MyLife matches on name, street address and birth year, and its two optional fields, a maiden or alias name and the URL of your own profile, are what prevent a we could not locate your record answer. Where a site publishes a phone number, use it. TruePeopleSearch publishes 888-838-4803 and PeopleFinders lists (877) 551-9688 as equal opt-out methods alongside their web forms, which is your way through when a form sits behind an anti-bot challenge and refuses to load for you. Clear the search result, or nothing looks different A listing that's already down can hold its search result for weeks. Once the page is actually gone, submit the URL to Google's Refresh Outdated Content tool , which is the form built for a page that has changed. Skip it and you'll keep searching your name and seeing the thing you removed. Google will also hide a page nobody will take down. Results about you watches your name, address and phone number and lets you request removal of the results carrying them , and Google's own policy is blunt that whether a request is approved or denied, the info still exists on the source web page. Take it down at the source first, then ask Google to stop pointing at it. Know the trade before you start it. To have Google watch for your address, you hand Google every address, every phone number, your maiden name and your nickname , and it will take your Social Security, passport and driver's license numbers too. That's a real decision, not a form field. Set the re-check date, because they repost This is the step that decides whether any of the work held. Every one of these sites puts you back. Spokeo's opt-out page says your information may reappear without notice and tells you to check regularly for additional listings. TruePeopleSearch says new public records return your listing. Whitepages promises all known connected listings, and known is doing the work in that sentence. So put a date on the calendar instead of trusting your memory, and re-run the same searches every few months . A reposted listing usually comes back at a new URL, which makes it a new request rather than a complaint about the old one, and nothing emails you when it happens. Write down what each site said, because you may need it. TruePeopleSearch received 155,567 opt-out requests in 2025, complied with 103,727 and denied 51,840 , and one of its two stated reasons, that it could not locate relevant records, is the one you fix by sending the exact URL of your listing. What removal doesn't reach The public record underneath all of this stays public. Whitepages' own list of exceptions to deletion begins with public information made available by government agencies, including property records, street address and criminal records. The county office, the voter file and the property deed are where the brokers got it, and no opt-out form reaches any of them. Deletion mostly isn't on offer here either. PeopleFinders received 2,847 Right to Delete requests in 2025 and complied in whole with zero of them. At PeopleConnect the suppression is a rule attached to an account, so deleting your user data there deletes your suppressions along with it. Keep the account. A court case, a mugshot or a news article is a different job with different owners and different rules, and nothing in this category touches them. If your name is returning all of it at once, tell us what you're seeing and we'll say plainly which parts come down and which parts have to be outranked instead. On this page Find every listing before you file anything Get one email address and one phone number ready Start with the forms that cover more than one site Then the singles, and finish each one in a sitting Clear the search result, or nothing looks different Set the re-check date, because they repost What removal doesn't reach Written by Drew Chapin → Updated 2026-09-08 Rather not do this yourself? Personal Information Removal → Related guides How to remove your info from Whitepages → How to remove yourself from Spokeo: one listing at a time, and it comes back → How to make your home address unsearchable → The whole network, not one site at a time Personal Information Removal is $399, one time : we find the listings you haven't, file each request the way that site's own policy demands, and keep re-filing for twelve months , because these sites put you back at a new URL and nobody tells you. Send us one listing with your name on it and we'll tell you how many others are out there. Have us do it. Everything above, filed for you, chased for you, and reported back. One flat fee. See the service → Every guide we publish is free and ungated. Browse all of them , see what we do and what it costs , or read why we built this company . Written by Drew Chapin , who ran all of this on his own name first. © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## Making a podcast findable: the free afternoon, then the catalog
URL: https://discoverability.co/guides/podcasts/

Home / Guides Guide hub Making a podcast findable: the free afternoon, then the catalog Your show is findable in the apps and nowhere else. Apple and Spotify each run their own search, and neither one reaches the open web , so the guest you had on last spring gets searched by name every day and your episode isn't what comes back. There's an afternoon of free platform work, and then there's the catalog. These guides run in that order , and this page says which one is yours. What this whole category can and can't do You can fix everything you type, and open surfaces your feed isn't on today. Feed categories, episode titles, the Apple editorial pitch, and a page with a transcript for every episode. What you can't do is buy a position. Apple states rankings cannot be purchased or sold, Spotify publishes no ranking control for creators at all, and no platform publishes a causal claim between any of this and a download number. Anyone quoting you a figure for doing it is guessing at it. What it costs you in time Nothing on the platform side has a fee, and all of it is one afternoon. No ID, no application, no submission for rank. The feed category is five minutes, the title pass is as long as your back catalog, and the Apple pitch has to go in two weeks ahead of the date you want. The catalog is the part that doesn't fit in an afternoon : a page and an edited transcript for every episode you've ever published, because a machine transcript has to be read and corrected before it goes up. The mistake that makes people think it failed Doing the work in one place and reading the number in another. Apple counts Plays and Engaged Listeners, Spotify counts Plays, and your host counts downloads at one minute of transferred audio, deduplicated on IP address and user agent. Three different questions, three different numbers, and none of them is a bigger version of another. A YouTube play never reaches your host's server, so it never becomes a download, and Apple shows you nothing at all until five unique listeners have played something. Work out which search you're losing Run three searches before you change anything. Type your exact show title into Apple Podcasts, then into Spotify, then type your last guest's name into Google. Those are three separate indexes that share nothing with each other , and the answer you get from each one points at a different guide underneath this page. Missing from an app entirely is a distribution problem, not a ranking one. On Spotify that usually means the show was never claimed, or the 8-digit verification code went to an address published in your feed that nobody reads. A show that isn't in the catalog can't be ranked inside it , so nothing you type into a title field matters until that's fixed. Present but sitting below bigger shows is placement, and placement is metadata and categories. Absent from Google when somebody searches your guest is the third problem, and it's the big one , because it isn't a podcast problem at all. Your episode isn't a web page, so there's nothing for a search engine or an assistant to return. Do the free platform afternoon first Start with the first category in your RSS feed, because it takes five minutes and it decides which chart you're eligible for at all. Spotify reads the first category listed in the feed , so open your show settings at your host, move the category you actually want into first position, then load the feed URL in a browser and read the order there rather than in the form you just typed into. Then the titles. Apple names its own ranking inputs , and the only one you type is the show name, the channel name and the episode title . Go through the back catalog and kill the duplicate episode titles first, cut the emojis, and get the episode numbers and pipes out of the front of every title. Apple picks a feed edit up within 24 hours, so you'll know by tomorrow whether it left your host. Then the one thing Apple actually lets you submit. Editorial featuring takes a pitch and rank doesn't , so send the request at least two weeks ahead of the date you want, ask for a Monday, and file a separate one for every country you care about. None of this has a fee , and nobody should invoice you for editing four fields and a category. Pick one number, and know what counts it Only your host counts downloads. Apple reports Plays, Listeners and Engaged Listeners. Spotify reports Plays. Those three numbers will never reconcile with each other, and an afternoon spent making them agree is an afternoon gone. Know what a download actually is before you chase it. It's a request that pulled the header plus enough audio to play for one minute, deduplicated on IP address and user agent inside a 24-hour window , so pulling your own episode ten times from one browser on one connection counts once. The number moves when more separate devices get a minute into the audio, which is the entire reason the open-web half of this page exists. A blank analytics panel is usually a floor, not a fault. Apple holds the numbers back until at least five unique listeners have played something inside the window you selected, so a new show or a quiet week shows you nothing and reads like a bug. Then build the pages, because that's the other half One episode, one page, one stable URL, on a domain you own. If the address you'd send somebody is on podcasts.apple.com, on open.spotify.com, or on your host's share domain, you don't have an episode page. You have a listing on somebody else's site, and that's the thing a search engine or an assistant has nothing to read. The transcript goes in the page's HTML, rendered from the server. Google's list of indexable file types carries no audio format at all, so the transcript is the only thing that turns a conversation into something a crawler can hold. Not a linked VTT file, not a PDF, and not a panel that loads when somebody clicks it. Request the page with a plain HTTP GET and search the response for a sentence from the middle of the episode. The transcripts Apple and Spotify already made for you don't count , because they live inside those apps and never reach the open web. Fetch either company's public page for your show and the text simply isn't in it. Whatever machine transcript you start from has to be read and corrected before you publish it, because speech recognition mangles exactly the words you'd want quoted back: guest names, company names and figures . A web address is not a website Neither store requires a site you own. Apple and Spotify want a working web address inside the show's link tag in your feed, and the page your host already publishes satisfies that as completely as a domain you paid for. Open your feed, read the address sitting in that tag, and open it. If it loads a page a person can read, you're compliant and there's nothing to do here today. If it loads raw XML, a parked domain or nothing, that's the one platform fix worth making this week , and you make it in your host's show settings rather than by hand-editing a feed your host regenerates. Which means the decision about a real site is a search decision and nothing else: you want the show findable outside the two apps, and you want pages you can edit instead of a directory listing you can't. Don't pay anybody for podcast schema. Google's developer page for podcast structured data returns a 404 and Podcast doesn't appear in the current gallery of supported types , so there's no podcast-specific rich result left to earn. Ordinary markup describing your organization and your pages still does its job. Write for the guest, the subject and the question Your show title is the one query you're already winning , and hardly anybody types it. What gets typed is a guest's name, the company they run, the thing they're known for, and the exact question you spent an hour answering. Those are the pages worth building, and every one of them is already sitting in an episode you've published. A wall of raw transcript clears the indexing bar and still isn't worth citing. Give the page the layer a person needs: the episode title, a real summary, guest names and what they actually do, timestamps, topic headings, and links to whatever got discussed. That's the difference between a page that contains words and a page that answers something. Then check that the answering crawlers are allowed in, one named agent at a time. OAI-SearchBot for ChatGPT search, Claude-SearchBot and Claude-User, PerplexityBot, and Googlebot for Google's AI features. Blocking a training crawler is not the same as blocking a search crawler , and a blanket AI block added in a hurry usually cuts off the surface you wanted to be on. Read the CDN and the firewall rules too, more than the file. What none of this moves Rank isn't for sale in either app. Apple states that rankings cannot be purchased or sold, and that ratings and reviews aren't factored into Search, which means a review drive persuades the human reading your show page and does nothing to your position. Spotify publishes no ranking control for creators and says results are often impacted by a show's play count. Anyone quoting you a price for a chart position is selling something the platform says doesn't exist. The two halves don't feed each other the way people hope. A YouTube play never touches your host's server, so it never becomes a download. A page on the open web doesn't move your Apple chart position or your Spotify search order, and nothing you edit inside a listening app puts your episode in front of the person searching your guest's name. Each surface pays out on its own terms, and you have to work them separately. And nobody publishes a time to first citation. Google's bar for AI Overviews and AI Mode is that the page is indexed and snippet-eligible with no additional technical requirements, and it says indexing is never guaranteed. So a promised date, a citation count or a ranking inside an assistant is invented. What the work does is stop the honest answer to why you're invisible being that there was nothing there to read. On this page Work out which search you're losing Do the free platform afternoon first Pick one number, and know what counts it Then build the pages, because that's the other half A web address is not a website Write for the guest, the subject and the question What none of this moves Written by Drew Chapin → Updated 2026-09-08 Rather not do this yourself? Podcast Growth → Related guides Why an AI assistant can't find your podcast: there's no text to read → How to rank higher in Apple Podcasts: the three fields, and the category that picks your chart → How to increase podcast downloads: four levers, and one of them takes five minutes → Do the afternoon yourself. Send us the catalog. Everything on the platform side is free, published by the platforms, and faster done by the person who already has the host login. What doesn't fit in an afternoon is the back catalog : every episode turned into a real page on a domain you own, carrying an edited transcript and the written content built around your guests, their companies and the questions people are already typing. Our Podcast Growth work is quoted against your feed, and it starts with us showing you what's already being searched for inside the episodes you've published. Have us do it. Everything above, filed for you, chased for you, and reported back. One flat fee. See the service → Every guide we publish is free and ungated. Browse all of them , see what we do and what it costs , or read why we built this company . Written by Drew Chapin , who ran all of this on his own name first. © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## How to remove a DOJ or U.S. Attorney press release from Google
URL: https://discoverability.co/guides/remove-a-doj-press-release-from-google/

Home / Guides / Content removal: who published it decides what comes down News and articles How to remove a DOJ or U.S. Attorney press release from Google There's no DOJ procedure for taking down a press release. No form, no deadline, no appeal , and the two correction channels other guides send you to are exempt by name on DOJ's own page. What exists is a district webmaster and a press office who can edit their own site. Get the exact URL and a certified copy of your order in front of them today , and ask for the smallest change that fixes it. What you actually get Most likely nothing, and you should plan around that. DOJ publishes no removal process, no service standard and no appeal, so a non-answer is the normal outcome and there is nobody above the office to take it to. The only asks that sit inside a webmaster's ordinary editing authority are a correction note appended to the page or a name redaction ; DOJ publishes nothing about whether it grants either, so treat both as requests, not as likely outcomes. Nobody can promise you the page disappears. What you have to send A certified copy of the order, by email, to the district office that published it. No fee, no ID, no lawyer. Neither DOJ web form takes an attachment and both cap your message at 2,000 characters, so the form cannot carry your order and is not meant to . The page says the form should not be used for service of official, case-related or legal documents. Copy the exact URL, the headline, the date and the case number before you write. What stops it working Filing an Information Quality Act correction request, which is what nearly every other page on this subject tells you to do. DOJ's own exemption list names your document: press releases and similar communications are carved out of the correction process, alongside adjudicative processes and criminal proceeding information. You would wait 120 calendar days for a refusal that never opens your order. The Privacy Act amendment route is closed the same way. 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. On this page Read the URL and name the office that published it Skip the two forms every other guide sends you to Write the district office, and put the order in that email Ask for the smallest change that fixes it File the webmaster form the same day Nothing acknowledges it, so set your own dates Clean Google last, and what none of this reaches Written by Drew Chapin → Updated 2026-09-08 Rather not do this yourself? Content Removal → Related guides Why your expunged record is still showing online → How to remove court records from Google → The DOJ page is one URL. The copies are not. Send the district email yourself today, it is free and nobody has to approve it. When the same release has been picked up by wire services and aggregators, Content Removal is $499 to $1,999 per page , and we check what each site's own policy allows before you pay anything. We will not tell you the justice.gov page is coming down , because that is a press office's decision and nobody gets to sell it. Have us do it. Everything above, filed for you, chased for you, and reported back. One flat fee. See the service → Every guide we publish is free and ungated. Browse all of them , see what we do and what it costs , or read why we built this company . Written by Drew Chapin , who ran all of this on his own name first. © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## How to remove a news article from Google
URL: https://discoverability.co/guides/remove-a-news-article-from-google/

Home / Guides / Content removal: who published it decides what comes down News and articles How to remove a news article from Google Google will not pull a live news story, and there's no form for asking. The page only moves after the outlet moves, so the work starts at the corrections desk with a URL, a quoted sentence and a document. Ask for the smallest change that fixes the search result, not a takedown. Then, and only then, there are four narrow search paths, and the only one that reliably moves a news URL needs a court order you have to go get first . What you actually get A correction or an update on the story, not a deletion. The documented outcome at an outlet that publishes a policy is the Texas Tribune's : 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's corrections log shows you the finished product. The story stays up and the URL doesn't change. What you have to hand over The exact URL, the sentence quoted word for word, and a primary document : a docket entry, a dismissal or vacatur order, an expungement order, an agency record. No outlet acts on an assertion, and describing the story instead of pasting its link gets you a form reply. Every request in this guide is free to send. The one expensive path is a court order, and that means winning or settling a defamation case first. What stops it working Opening with "take it down." That gets refused as a category at a real outlet, and it spends the one exchange you get. Ask for the narrow thing instead: a correction, an editor's note, a follow-up on the outcome, or your name off a routine crime brief. A lawyer's demand letter does the same damage faster , because it turns an editorial question into a legal one, freezes the copy, and can become its own story. 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. On this page Write down every URL, and check what kind of site this is Classify it in one word before you write to anyone Send the corrections desk the URL, the sentence, and the document If the facts changed, ask for the narrower change by name Google's four paths, and which one is yours If the article is false, check your state's clock today When the answer is no Written by Drew Chapin → Updated 2026-09-08 Rather not do this yourself? Content Removal → Related guides How to use Google's removal tools on a court record → Why your expunged record is still showing online → Reputation management after an arrest → The story is rarely at one address Send the corrections request yourself today. It's free, and it's the step that actually moves the page. When the same story is running under other mastheads, or the desk won't answer, Content Removal is $499 to $1,999 per case : we chase every copy, put the classification and the documents in front of each desk in writing, and file the search paths you actually qualify for. We won't sell you the takedown of a true story , because nobody can deliver one. Have us do it. Everything above, filed for you, chased for you, and reported back. One flat fee. See the service → Every guide we publish is free and ungated. Browse all of them , see what we do and what it costs , or read why we built this company . Written by Drew Chapin , who ran all of this on his own name first. © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## How to remove an FBI press release from Google: check who owns the page first
URL: https://discoverability.co/guides/remove-an-fbi-press-release-from-google/

Home / Guides / Content removal: who published it decides what comes down News and articles How to remove an FBI press release from Google: check who owns the page first Open the press release in a browser and watch the address bar. If it stays on fbi.gov, an FBI office owns it. If it jumps to justice.gov, a U.S. Attorney's office or Justice Department headquarters owns it and the FBI can't take it down. There's no removal form at either agency, so this is a written request to a named press officer with documentary proof attached. Get the owner right before you write a word. What you actually get Discretion, not a procedure. Neither the FBI nor the Justice Department publishes a removal process, a form, a turnaround time or an appeal for a press release, so the answer is whatever the press office that published it decides. The realistic win is an appended dated correction, or a de-index so it stops ranking on your name. Deletion happens when the originating office chooses it, or, at the outer edge, when counsel goes back to the court in the underlying case and asks it to order one. What you have to hand over No fee and no form, but the proof is on you. Send a certified or stamped copy of the order that changed the facts, a dismissal, acquittal, vacatur, expungement, sealing order or pardon, or, when no court order exists because the release simply got a fact or an identity wrong, the documents that prove the correct fact, plus photo ID tying you to the name printed on the page, plus both URLs, the headline and the date. An email that just says the case went away gets ignored , because the office has no way to check the outcome or to check who you are. What stops it working Sending it to the wrong agency. An fbi.gov press release URL can redirect to justice.gov, and when it does, a U.S. Attorney's office or the Justice Department's Office of Public Affairs wrote it and the FBI can't edit or remove it . Load the page and read the address bar before you write to anybody. The other way it dies is a guessed email address, because the office media aliases don't follow the city name . Open the release and watch where it lands Click the link that's ranking on your name and let it finish loading in a normal browser. If the address bar still reads fbi.gov, an FBI office published it: the field office named in the URL, or FBI headquarters when the release sits under fbi.gov/news/press-releases with no field office in the path. If the address changes to justice.gov, a U.S. Attorney's office or Justice Department headquarters published it, the fbi.gov address is only a pointer, and the FBI has nothing to take down . We ran this on September 8, 2026: an fbi.gov Philadelphia news URL landed on justice.gov/usao-nj, while a Tampa one stayed exactly where it was. When it redirects, copy both addresses. The fbi.gov URL is the one people find and the justice.gov URL is the one that can be edited, and your request needs both on it. Then scroll to the bottom of a justice.gov release, where the page carries Component, Topics, an Updated date and, on most releases, a Press Release Number. Copy whichever of those it shows. That number is how the office finds the file without going looking for it. Read the press contact off the page you are already on Do not guess the email address. The FBI prints the media contact at the top of the release itself and on the office's News page, and the format changes office to office. The Philadelphia release we loaded reads Public Affairs Specialist Sofia Kettler, philadelphia.media@fbi.gov . The Tampa one reads Public Affairs Officer Andrea Aprea, tp.media@fbi.gov . The Los Angeles News page lists three specialists, a phone number, and two addresses, LA-Media@fbi.gov and FBILAPressOffice@fbi.gov . Some offices print a person and some print only a mailbox. The FBI Philadelphia News index gives FBI Philadelphia Media Office with the address under it and no name at all, which is still the right place to write. Take whatever is on the page. If you need to find the office that covers your city, the FBI's field office directory lists all 56 with addresses and phone numbers. On a justice.gov release, the contact lives on that district's own Contact Us page , under the heading Public Affairs Office, on the line that reads For Members of the Press. The District of New Jersey's page gives 973-645-2783 and USANJ.PublicAffairs@usdoj.gov. Districts publish their own, and the release's own top navigation carries a Contact Us link straight to it, as the District of New Jersey release above does. Write it as a letter, and ask for three things in order There is no form, no portal and no ticket number. You are writing an email to one person who has to decide this by hand, so hand them everything and keep it short. Put the headline and, if the release shows one, the press release number in the subject line. In the body: both URLs, the publication date, your name exactly as it is printed on the page, and one paragraph on what is now false or superseded. Attach the order, certified or stamped by the court that entered it , and attach photo ID in the same email. The office has no way to know you are the person named in the release, and no way to confirm a disposition you only describe. If the release names the Assistant U.S. Attorneys who handled the case, copy them on it , because they can confirm the outcome in one line. Ask for three things in order, easiest last: take the page down, or leave it up and append a dated note saying what happened, or at minimum de-index it so it stops ranking on your name. The middle one is what a press office can say yes to without a lawyer. Quote the Department's own legal policies page back at them, which says the Department will make every effort to correct errors brought to our attention. That sentence, not a statute, is the leverage you have. Skip the two processes that look official and are not Do not file a Request for Correction under the Information Quality Act. It is the route most removal advice points at, and DOJ's own Information Quality page exempts press releases from it by name. The list of exempted categories includes press releases, fact sheets, press conferences or similar communications in any medium. DOJ answers a Request for Correction within 120 calendar days, and a press release is outside the process, so the filing buys you a wait and a rejection you could have read in advance. A Privacy Act amendment request does not reach a webpage either. That process covers records held in a system of records, a public press release on a website is not one, and the FBI's central records system is separately exempted from the amendment provision. Your leverage is the press officer's discretion and, if you have one, a court order. Everything else on offer is a form that was never built for this. If nothing comes back, escalate inside the same office Set your own follow-up date the day you send it , because neither agency publishes one. There is no status page, no ticket number, and no acknowledgment to sit waiting for. When your date arrives and the page is unchanged, re-send the identical email one level up . Re-sending is not rude here. It is the only mechanism that exists. On the FBI side, the next addressee is the field office's Special Agent in Charge, or the Assistant Director in Charge who heads Los Angeles, New York City and Washington, D.C., and after that the National Press Office at (202) 324-3000 , listed on fbi.gov/contact-us under Additional FBI contacts. That is a media line for reporters, not a removals desk , so use it only after the field office has had your request in writing and done nothing with it. On the Justice Department side it goes district Public Affairs Officer, then the First Assistant or the U.S. Attorney by name, which you get from the U.S. Attorneys Listing covering all 94 districts, then the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys. If the page has already moved to justice.gov/archives, the banner on it points at webmaster@usdoj.gov , which is a different desk from the one that wrote it. If your case was dismissed, sealed, vacated or expunged, the strongest move left is back in the court that entered that order. Counsel can ask that court for relief directing the government to take down its own publication, and where the release contains a hard factual error about a named person, a demand letter from a lawyer to the district's Public Affairs Officer and the field office's chief division counsel is the pressure that gets releases edited. Neither of those is a form you file on your own. Clean up Google only after the page actually changes Refresh Outdated Content is the tool, and it is built for content that has already been deleted or changed on the site. Sign in to a Google account, follow Google's instructions , select Request refresh, enter the URL on the Page tab and select Submit. Running it against a live page nobody has touched does nothing , which is why this step comes last. Your request status shows under Refresh outdated content in Google Search Console. Google's personal information removal is the wrong tool for a press release. Behind Start removal request, the list of what it covers is your address, phone and email, confidential government ID numbers, bank and card numbers, pictures of your signature or ID, and private records like medical records. A government press release is not on that list. And even a granted Google removal leaves the page sitting exactly where it is on fbi.gov. What this does not do An expungement does not reach a federal agency's website. Sealing or expunging the case changes the court's own record, and nothing in that order automatically obliges the FBI or the Justice Department to unpublish a release they lawfully issued. There is no U.S. right to be forgotten and no statute that compels the takedown , which is why the ask goes to a person rather than into a process. Getting the page down does not get the story down. Old Justice Department content moves to justice.gov/archives, where the banner reads This is archived content from the U.S. Department of Justice website, and the news sites and aggregators that republished the release keep their own copies and keep ranking on your name. Each of those is a separate request to a separate publisher , and none of them is bound by what the FBI decides. Nothing ages off on its own. The year filter on the FBI's press release index starts at 2010 and runs to this year, and nothing inside that window ages off on its own. Search your name again in a month and open the page yourself. A removal you have not seen with your own eyes is not one you can tell anybody about. On this page Open the release and watch where it lands Read the press contact off the page you are already on Write it as a letter, and ask for three things in order Skip the two processes that look official and are not If nothing comes back, escalate inside the same office Clean up Google only after the page actually changes What this does not do Written by Drew Chapin → Updated 2026-09-08 Rather not do this yourself? Content Removal → Related guides Why your expunged record is still showing online → How to remove arrest records from Google → The release is one page, and the copies are the rest of it Send the request yourself today, because it costs you nothing but the paperwork you already have. When the same story is sitting on the news sites and aggregators that picked it up, our Content Removal service is $499 to $1,999 per case, we work each publisher's own policy one site at a time, and we build accurate pages to outrank whatever will not come down. Have us do it. Everything above, filed for you, chased for you, and reported back. One flat fee. See the service → Every guide we publish is free and ungated. Browse all of them , see what we do and what it costs , or read why we built this company . Written by Drew Chapin , who ran all of this on his own name first. © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## How to remove an IRS press release from Google: read the status code first
URL: https://discoverability.co/guides/remove-an-irs-press-release-from-google/

Home / Guides / Content removal: who published it decides what comes down News and articles How to remove an IRS press release from Google: read the status code first Open the release URL before you do anything else. IRS Criminal Investigation releases don't stay on irs.gov forever: as of September 2026 the oldest one still live is from August 2021, and anything older returns Page Not Found. If yours is already gone, one free Google request clears the stale search result , and you don't need to own the page. If it still loads, there's no removal form anywhere, and the honest answer is different. What you actually get Google refreshes its own search result. Nothing here deletes anything from irs.gov. When the release has already 404'd, an approved request drops the result out of Search, and Google's doc says exactly that: if the page is no longer available, it will no longer appear in Search results. When the release still loads, Google will not remove a live result , and no IRS form exists that makes the page itself go away. What you hand over A Google account and the exact URL. That's the entire form when the page is dead: no ID, no court order, no docket number, no fee, and no relationship to the page. Google requires the sign-in only to prevent abuse. If the page still resolves but the text changed, you'll also be asked for 1 to 2 words that were in the old search snippet and are no longer live . What stops it working The page is still there. Google's own instructions are blunt: if the page still exists, and if the information you want removed is still there, this tool is not for you. A request filed against a live irs.gov release comes back Denied, and refiling changes nothing. Check the status code before you file , because that one check decides which of these two procedures you're actually running. Copy the URL that ranks, then load it Search your full name in quotes, then your name plus the case caption, and copy the irs.gov link exactly as it appears in the result . Paste it into the browser bar and load it. You're checking one thing: whether the page is still there. A deleted release serves the IRS error page, which reads Page Not Found. Error 404. Sorry, this page is not available. A live release opens with a date line and the story. The cutoff moves, so check it rather than trusting anyone's number. The Criminal Investigation press releases index groups its months under Prior year news , and as of September 2026 the oldest month listed is August 2021. Earlier month URLs return 404. The IRS publishes no retention policy for these pages, so treat it as an observed boundary of roughly five years, not a rule you can cite at anyone. Write down every copy while you're here, more than the irs.gov one. The same paragraphs usually sit on the U.S. Attorney's site as well, and de-indexing one page leaves the other ranking on your name. Search the case caption on its own too, because the news write-ups that quoted the release are a third set of URLs and they answer to nobody in this procedure. If the page 404s, file the Google refresh request This is the one step with a real form and a real answer. Open Google's Refresh Outdated Content tool , sign in, paste the URL, and click Submit . The tool is built for your exact situation: Google's eligibility line is that you use it if you do not own the web page pointed to by Google. Because the page is actually gone, you won't be asked for any snippet text. Your request lands in the request queue at the bottom of the tool carrying one of five statuses. Pending means Google is working on it, and in their words processing can take a few days. Approved, Denied, Expired and Cancelled are the rest, and a denial comes with a link explaining why . There is nothing to chase in the meantime, no second address to try, and nobody to call. Approved is not permanent. Google's doc says a request expires once 180 days have passed since approval, or once the URL no longer exists, so re-search your name after it clears and file again if the result is back. The whole thing is free and takes a few minutes, which means anyone quoting you a fee to de-index a dead IRS page is charging you to fill in one box . If the page still loads, you're inside the window There is no removal form and no published removal policy. What there is, printed at the top of every release, is the contact line: Contact: newsroom@ci.irs.gov . That's the Criminal Investigation press desk and it's the address to use. newsroom@irs.gov belongs to the IRS Media Relations Office , a different desk handling a different set of releases, and a letter sent there is a letter wasted. Keep the message to three things: the full URL, the docket entry number of the order that ended the matter, and one specific ask . Ask them to block the page from search engines rather than delete it, because that's the smaller request and it's the one that fixes your search results. Their own index page hands you the argument: News items may not be updated after their release. Please verify the date before relying on the language. Expect no answer. Nothing obligates the press desk to reply, and there's no acknowledgment window, no appeal and no service level anywhere on those pages. Meanwhile every release older than August 2021 has already come off the site on its own, so time is doing more work here than any letter will . Nobody can give you a date for that, and anyone who offers one is guessing. The U.S. Attorney's copy is a separate desk Two copies, two requests. The IRS-CI page is usually the district's announcement reprinted, down to the line naming the U.S. Attorney who announced it, so the same ask has to be made twice with the same evidence. Start at Find Your United States Attorney and open the district that charged the case. Write to the office's designated media contact, not a general inbox. The Justice Manual sets that up: 1-7.200 says each United States Attorney's Office shall designate at least one person to act as a point of contact on matters pertaining to the media, and 1-7.310 says the U.S. Attorney has responsibility for all matters involving the local media. Send the same URL, the same docket entry, the same ask. That policy contains no takedown provision, so don't let anyone tell you it does. 1-7.000 governs what may be published and who speaks to reporters, and it says nothing about removal, retention or deleting a page. One practical note: justice.gov press pages sit behind a bot check that answers 200 to anything , including a URL that was never real, so a status code pulled by a script proves nothing. Open the page in a browser and look. A Circular 230 sanction is a different record If a suspension or disbarment is what's ranking, the look-up matters more than the press release. The Office of Professional Responsibility publishes its disciplinary list as a searchable spreadsheet on Search for disciplined tax professionals , and that file is what a compliance desk actually pulls on you. It covers the last 25 years, which aligns with OPR's record-retention requirement. That file moves. OPR updates it to reflect reinstatements to practice after the end of a suspension or disbarment, and getting there takes a petition. 31 CFR 10.81 lets a disbarred or suspended practitioner, or a disqualified appraiser, petition for reinstatement five years on, or immediately after the suspension or disqualification period expires if that period is shorter than five years, with the IRS satisfied that you are not likely to engage thereafter in conduct contrary to the regulations in this part and that reinstatement would not be contrary to the public interest. The Internal Revenue Bulletin announcement that named you is permanent. The IRS calls the Bulletin the authoritative instrument for announcing official rulings and procedures , back issues are archived by number, and nobody edits one. The IRS does say a practitioner's eligibility may have been reinstated since the discipline was published, which is why the look-up is the record worth fixing. Trouble using that file goes to OPR by eFax at 855-814-1722 , or by mail to Internal Revenue Service, Office of Professional Responsibility, IR Room 7238, 1111 Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20224. It is not a removal channel. What not to do, and what none of this reaches Don't file Google's private information form. That route is Remove my private info from Google Search , and it covers home addresses, government ID numbers, bank details and medical records. It also states that if the content is about something important or newsworthy, like the news, Google might not take it down. A federal prosecution release is the definition of that carve-out , so the request comes back denied. Don't file a FOIA request either. FOIA gets you access to records. It is not a correction or removal channel, and nothing on the IRS FOIA page amends or takes down a published news item. The same discipline applies to the refresh tool once a page is live: Google's instructions say plainly that if the page still exists, and if the information you want removed is still there, this tool is not for you . Be clear about what none of this touches. De-indexing the irs.gov page changes nothing in the court's docket, nothing in PACER, nothing in the news articles that quoted the release, and nothing on the legal databases that copied the case. Every one of those is its own site with its own policy and its own request, and the IRS page is usually the easiest one on that list . On this page Copy the URL that ranks, then load it If the page 404s, file the Google refresh request If the page still loads, you're inside the window The U.S. Attorney's copy is a separate desk A Circular 230 sanction is a different record What not to do, and what none of this reaches Written by Drew Chapin → Updated 2026-09-08 Rather not do this yourself? Content Removal → Related guides How to use Google's removal tools on a court record → Reputation management after an arrest → The IRS page is one copy of the story File the Google request yourself today , it's free and it's one box. When the same case is also sitting on news sites, legal databases and the district's own announcement, our Content Removal service is $499 to $1,999 and we work each publication against its own policy, one at a time, so you're not writing ten letters and waiting on ten desks. Have us do it. Everything above, filed for you, chased for you, and reported back. One flat fee. See the service → Every guide we publish is free and ungated. Browse all of them , see what we do and what it costs , or read why we built this company . Written by Drew Chapin , who ran all of this on his own name first. © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## How to remove arrest records from Google
URL: https://discoverability.co/guides/remove-arrest-records-from-google/

Home / Guides / Court record removal: what actually comes down Guide How to remove arrest records from Google Pull every URL first, then get the court order, or a certified copy of your disposition if you don't have one yet , send the request each site actually answers, and file with Google last. Do it in that order, because every request below runs on the court document and the Google form is the step most likely to come back denied . Most of it's free. We'll say where each step stops working, and what nothing on this page can touch. What you actually get Two different outcomes, so know which one you're chasing. Mugshots.com deletes the page only for expungement, seal, no information, record restriction, identity theft or death. A dismissal or an acquittal gets you an annotation the site itself calls "not a removal," with the disposition displayed on every page about your arrest. Google's side is de-indexing, not deletion : the URL stops coming up on your name and the page stays live. What you have to send One document does all the work: a court order signed by a judge and sealed by the court, and legible , plus the record ID the site prints on your own page. That's the Mugshots.com standard, in its words. A phone snap of a docket printout is not a signed, sealed order, and the site's policy says non-legible documents are discarded with no notification , so a bad scan and being ignored look identical from where you're sitting. What stops it working Google's exploitative-sites policy has three conditions, and the third is that the site requires payment to have the content removed . Mugshots.com now states in writing that it accepts no payment for removal of arrest information or booking photographs, and a site that charges nothing fails that condition . That's why the Google form most people are pointed at comes back denied on an arrest page. Start with a list of URLs, not an email Search your own name in quotes, then your name with your city, then your name with the word arrest, and copy the exact URL of every page that comes back . Every step below runs per URL, and Google removes only the URLs you hand it, up to 1,000 per submission. A URL you didn't find is a URL that stays up. On each page, write down two things. The record ID the site prints on your page , because Mugshots.com asks for its own ID number in the request, and whether the site is demanding money to take the page down. Screenshot a payment demand before you contact anyone , because that screenshot is the evidence Google's form asks for and paying the site erases it. Leave the government pages off your list. Don't file on the sheriff's booking page or the clerk's docket , Google won't remove them and the submission is spent. Work the private copies , which is what every request below is aimed at. Get the one document every request runs on Every door below opens with paperwork from the court. The strong version is an order: expungement, sealing, record restriction, or a no-information filing , signed by a judge and sealed by the court. Those are the exact grounds Mugshots.com removes for, and the same document is what a statutory demand and a Google submission get attached to. If you don't have one yet, call the clerk of courts in the county that handled the case and ask for a certified copy of your disposition . Have your docket number and your arrest date ready before you dial. In Pennsylvania the petitions are forms on the courts' own site, Petition for Expungement Pursuant to Pa.R.Crim.P. 490 for summary offenses and Rule 790 for court cases, filed under 18 Pa.C.S. § 9122 . Other states run their own forms and their own waiting periods. Send the order yourself, one site at a time. Nobody forwards it for you, so plan on a separate email or certified letter for every URL on the list you built in step one, each carrying its own clean copy of the same scan. Send the Mugshots.com request, and send it right the first time The request is free and the procedure is published on the site's own record maintenance page : "Mugshots.com does not charge for removing or updating mugshots/arrest records." Email your court documentation to mugshots.com1@gmail.com and put your Mugshots.com record ID in the message. The ID is printed on your own page, so pull it before you start writing. Send a clean, full-page scan of the whole order, not a photo, and keep the sent mail and the attachment you sent . Illegible documents get discarded silently, so your own copy is the only proof of what went out. The stated window is up to 10 business days , and the site disclaims any guarantee on timing, so don't read silence at day three as a refusal. If your case ended in acquittal, dismissal, nolle prosequi, exoneration, pardon or adjudication withheld, that goes to a different address, docverify1@gmail.com , and the result is an annotation the site marks as not a removal. Your disposition then shows on every page about the arrest. Do it anyway , because a visible dismissal beats a bare booking photo, and then keep working the court order. Send the state statute if you're in Georgia, Texas or California Georgia is the cleanest. Under O.C.G.A. § 10-1-393.5 , the operator "shall, without fee or compensation, remove" the booking photograph within 30 days of a written request, on eight triggers including dismissal, acquittal, restricted access and an expired statute of limitations. Send it by certified mail or statutory overnight delivery to the registered agent or principal place of business, carrying your name, date of birth, date of arrest and the arresting agency. Texas has more teeth, and one threshold decides whether it applies to you at all. For an adult arrest record, Business and Commerce Code Chapter 109 reaches a site that charges $150 or more to remove, or any fee at all to correct . Where it applies, the site has to verify the disputed data with law enforcement free of charge , finish the investigation not later than the 45th business day after your notice, and write to you within five business days of finishing. Publishing after notice of an expunction or nondisclosure order is actionable up to $500 per violation plus $500 for each subsequent day, costs and fees. The duty starts when you give notice, so serve the order yourself and date it. California is the one to be careful with. Civil Code § 1798.91.1 bans the removal fee and gives you a private action for the greater of $1,000 per violation or actual damages, but it imposes no duty to remove anything . And all three statutes need a defendant you can serve: Mugshots.com's own footer names an operator in Nevis, West Indies . File with Google on the exploitative-sites form The policy that fits an arrest page is content on sites with exploitative removal practices , and all three of its conditions have to hold: you're the subject of the content at the URL, the site is not a business review site, and the site requires payment to have the content removed . File it on the content removal form , which takes your URLs, your screenshots and a written explanation of how the site is exploitative. The third condition is where most arrest removals die , so check it before you spend an hour on the form. Mugshots.com now states in writing that it doesn't charge, which fails the test, so when the site charges you nothing, work the court order and the statute instead . Don't file at Results about you. It covers phone numbers, addresses, emails, Social Security, passport and driver's license numbers, and it has no category for an arrest record , so an arrest URL produces a denial that reads like Google refusing you when it's really the wrong door. Google publishes no turnaround time for any of these decisions, so anyone quoting you a Google timeline is guessing . Once a page is down, clear the result it left behind Run the dead URL through the Refresh Outdated Content tool , which clears the stale result off your name. It needs a Google account, and it only works after the page is gone or materially changed. Google is blunt about the limit: "If the page still exists, and if the information you want removed is still there, this tool is not for you." Submit a live page and you get a denial. Two limits to plan around. An approved refresh expires after 180 days , and a site owner who has verified that domain in Search Console can cancel your request outright. So confirm the page is actually dead before you submit, and check the status of every request you file rather than assuming it held. Then run the same three searches again, on a schedule you'll keep: your name in quotes, your name with your city, your name with the word arrest. A new URL is a new request , and it starts at step one with the same order you already have. Where this stops, and what doing it yourself costs None of these requests costs money. Mugshots.com says so on its policy page, Georgia's statute says "without fee or compensation," and Google's form is free. What it costs is repetition: every copy is a separate request in that site's format to that site's address , most of them never reply, and one of them throws away a bad scan without telling you. It stops working on a conviction that stands. Every removal trigger in every layer keys on a favorable outcome , so if you were convicted and the conviction hasn't been expunged, sealed, pardoned or granted limited access, you meet none of them, and 15 U.S.C. § 1681c(a)(5) carves convictions out of the seven-year limit entirely. The work there is suppression , which means building pages that outrank the record. It also stops at the newsroom, and at the courthouse. A paper that reported your arrest accurately can decline forever , and there's no request that changes that. And the honest limit on everything above: taking a copy down does not seal or expunge the court's own record. The clerk's file and the sheriff's roster stay exactly where they are. On this page Start with a list of URLs, not an email Get the one document every request runs on Send the Mugshots.com request, and send it right the first time Send the state statute if you're in Georgia, Texas or California File with Google on the exploitative-sites form Once a page is down, clear the result it left behind Where this stops, and what doing it yourself costs Written by Drew Chapin → Updated 2026-09-08 Rather not do this yourself? Court Record Removal → Related guides Reputation management after an arrest → How to use Google's removal tools on a court record → How to remove DUI records from Google → You get the order. We send the requests. Court Record Removal is $199, one time. We send the request every site holding your arrest actually answers, in that site's own format, then file the Google removals and keep re-checking for twelve months in case a copy comes back. Have us do it. Everything above, filed for you, chased for you, and reported back. One flat fee. See the service → Every guide we publish is free and ungated. Browse all of them , see what we do and what it costs , or read why we built this company . Written by Drew Chapin , who ran all of this on his own name first. © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## How to remove bankruptcy records from Google
URL: https://discoverability.co/guides/remove-bankruptcy-records-from-google/

Home / Guides / Court record removal: what actually comes down Guide How to remove bankruptcy records from Google You searched your name and found your bankruptcy case on a site you've never heard of. Write down the exact URL of every site it shows up on before you send anything , because each request below covers only the URLs you list. Three of the companies below take a free request that pulls the page out of Google. Two publish no process at all, and Google itself is a separate request on top. You get de-indexed, not deleted Justia, UniCourt and CourtListener all do the same thing: the page stops coming up on your name and stays live at the same address . Anyone holding the direct link still opens it. All three say so in writing, and CourtListener adds that removals not made under a court order are at its sole discretion. What you have to send Justia takes the exact URLs, your name and your email. CourtListener asks for links to the specific pages, and that's the whole stated requirement. Neither one charges a fee or wants an ID. UniCourt is the one that wants documents: a conformed copy of the court order if you're claiming the case was sealed or expunged, a police report if you're claiming identity theft. An assertion with nothing attached gets denied. What stops it working UniCourt's policy weighs four grounds: sealed or expunged by court order, risk of physical harm, identity theft, or harm to a minor . An ordinary consumer bankruptcy with none of those is a general objection to being online, which is discretionary and has no listed ground. Appeals need documentation you didn't already send, and they're final, so don't send a thin request expecting to fix it later. Find every URL before you send anything Search your full name in quotes alongside the case number or the district, and write down the exact URL of every hit . Each request below covers the URLs you list and nothing else, so a page pulled at one site leaves the others sitting exactly where they were. Don't start at the court. PACER has no removal, suppression or opt-out process to invoke , so anything you send there moves nothing. The work is at the companies below, plus Google. Justia: one form, no documents Go to Justia's support form , check the box for blocking a Justia link from search engines, and paste the exact URLs into the field that asks for the links you want blocked, then add anything else in the second comments box, which is also required . Your name and email are required too. No documents, no ID, no fee. What you get is a search-engine block. Justia won't fully remove a docket without a court order sealing the record or designating it for removal from the public record, and it publishes no timeline for the block either. Then check the work yourself. Don't treat a confirmation email as the finish line : search the same name and case number again at 30 and 60 days, and if the page is still coming up, send the form again with the URL that's still ranking. CourtListener may have blocked it already Check before you write. Search your name on CourtListener first, because if nothing of yours comes up there, you have nothing to send. If something does, note whether what ranks is the docket page or a document page inside it. Send the docket page. A RECAP document page is already noindexed, so a request on one buys you nothing , and the docket page is the surface they actually block. Use the removal option on CourtListener's contact page, list the specific URLs, and fill it in by hand in a browser, because the form sits behind a bot check. Their policy is blunt about the rest. They won't delete a public document without a court order , they publish no turnaround, and they warn that the search engines may not drop your case from their results for many months, if at all. UniCourt takes about 60 days, and you have to file it yourself The redaction request is free at every stage including the appeal, and UniCourt's policy says so in those words. Only a party to the record, a legal guardian or fiduciary, or an attorney representing a party can file it , so a reputation firm submitting it on your behalf is a denial. It's you or your attorney of record, nobody else. The form wants your name, mailing address, an email and a phone number with both confirmed, your country and state of residence, the exact UniCourt URL, your relationship to the record, a bar number and bar state if you're claiming attorney status, the reason you're asking, and the court order or police report that reason requires. Verify the confirmation email inside 14 days or the request dies quietly. UniCourt targets a decision in 30 days and says de-indexing takes roughly 30 more, so budget about 60 days . If you're denied, the appeal window is 30 days from the notice, and it only gets considered with substantive documentation you hadn't already sent. PacerMonitor and DocketBird PacerMonitor is the hard one. Its privacy policy contains no removal, opt-out or deletion process of any kind, and the only address published anywhere in it is support@pacermonitor.com . Send your URLs there, but there's no procedure, no standard and no timeline behind it, so don't build your plan around a reply. DocketBird's removal pages are gone. Checked September 8, 2026: the request-removal URL that other guides still send you to now redirects to the homepage , and the paid removal-service page returns a missing page. Send your URLs to the address on its contact page instead. Its privacy policy also reserves the right to post a notice that case materials are hidden because someone asked, so decide whether you want that marker before you write. The two things Google will act on Your street address is on the petition. That address comes out of Google's results even though the bankruptcy doesn't , through personal information removal , which also covers your phone, email, government ID numbers and bank and card numbers. File it on every republisher URL that shows the address. The second lever is exploitative removal practices , and all three conditions have to hold: you're the subject of the content, the site isn't a business review site, and the site requires payment to take the content down. So never pay a court-record site to remove a docket. A fee demand is the thing that gets the links pulled for free. Submit the exact URLs, one per line, on Google's removal form , with screenshots and your affirmation that you're the subject. Google publishes no decision time for either request , so file them and get on with the rest of the list instead of waiting on a date. What none of this changes, and when to check again Pulling a copy out of Google doesn't seal or expunge the court's own record. The case stays public and stays name-searchable through the PACER Case Locator by anyone who opens an account, so a lender, an employer's screening vendor or a reporter pulling PACER directly still finds it. If the goal is that nobody can learn you filed, no procedure and no service delivers that. Don't spend a request on state privacy law. Court-record data is publicly available information, so it's exempt from the CCPA's right to delete , and the request burns 45 days and comes back denied. The credit-reporting clock runs separately, and nothing on this page moves it. Then re-check. Look at every address you filed on at 60, 90 and 180 days , search your name again for URLs that weren't there the first time, and send a fresh request on each new one, because UniCourt's process is per-URL. On this page Find every URL before you send anything Justia: one form, no documents CourtListener may have blocked it already UniCourt takes about 60 days, and you have to file it yourself PacerMonitor and DocketBird The two things Google will act on What none of this changes, and when to check again Written by Drew Chapin → Updated 2026-09-08 Rather not do this yourself? Court Record Removal → Related guides How to remove your record from Justia → How to remove your record from UniCourt → How to remove your record from CourtListener → One case, a separate request at every site Court Record Removal is $199. We find every copy, file the requests we're allowed to file, prepare the one UniCourt requires you to sign yourself, and keep re-submitting for twelve months as new URLs appear. Have us do it. Everything above, filed for you, chased for you, and reported back. One flat fee. See the service → Every guide we publish is free and ungated. Browse all of them , see what we do and what it costs , or read why we built this company . Written by Drew Chapin , who ran all of this on his own name first. © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## How to remove divorce records from Google
URL: https://discoverability.co/guides/remove-divorce-records-from-google/

Home / Guides / Court record removal: what actually comes down Guide How to remove divorce records from Google You found your divorce case on a site you'd never heard of, and you want it gone today. Work in this order: the free aggregator forms first, the court file second, Google last. UniCourt and Trellis both take a redaction request straight from you, with no court order and no fee . Start there. The de-indexing request at the end only works once those pages have already changed. Redacted, not deleted Trellis says in writing that it has no legal obligation to act without a court order, and that permanent deletion needs one. Redaction is what you're getting on an unsealed case. Even after every request lands, expect the docket line to survive: party names, case type, filing date . What each form asks for UniCourt wants the exact URL of the record , your relationship to it, and the affected party's full name, address, email and phone. Trellis wants your name, your email, confirmation the record is about you, and your reason. Neither one asks for a court order and neither one charges. What gets it refused Filing with Google before the page changes. The Refresh Outdated Content tool only re-crawls the URL against what the live page says now. If the aggregator hasn't redacted anything yet, the page still says what it said, and the request is rejected. Change the page first, then file with Google. Never the other way round. Collect the exact URLs before you file anything Search your full name in quotes, then your name together with your ex-spouse's name, and write down every URL that comes back . Don't work from memory and don't plan to describe the case later. Every form below wants the exact address of the page pasted into it. Mark the UniCourt and Trellis URLs. Those are the ones you file on today. Put anything sitting on a county clerk or state judiciary portal, or on a news site, on a separate list. Nothing in the next three sections takes those down, and the court file section below is the only route that reaches them. judyrecords carries divorce dockets and publishes no removal procedure that we could find. If it's holding one of your results, treat it as a suppression problem rather than a removal one, and don't spend a week hunting for a form. File the UniCourt redaction request UniCourt's Public Records Redaction Request runs at unicourt.com/case/removeRecord , and it's three steps: submit the form, verify your email, then select the party name you want redacted . Have the exact UniCourt URL open in another tab before you start, because the form asks for it. Only a party to the record, a legal guardian or fiduciary, or an attorney representing a party can file. The form asks for your country and state of residence, your relationship to the record, the affected party's full name, address, email and phone, your reason, and any supporting documentation. Attorneys add a bar number and bar state. UniCourt states that it doesn't charge for submitting, processing, or appealing a request, and that it typically decides within 30 days and puts that decision in writing. A decision is not a removal. One request covers one record, so a case sitting on two UniCourt URLs is two separate submissions , filed the same day. Then Trellis, straight from the docket page Open the Trellis page carrying your case and click Request Redaction in the bottom right corner. The walkthrough is at support.trellis.law . The form is short. Your name, your email, confirmation that the record is about you, and your reason. Trellis never charges for a redaction request and says so on its own page , along with a warning about third parties who do. On an unsealed case you get redacted names, public and logged-out access removed, and a request to search engines not to index the record. If a court has already sealed your case, attach the order, which Trellis says it processes immediately . Trellis publishes no turnaround and says only that requests are processed in the order they're received. File it, write down the date you filed, and move on to the next item. If a site is charging you, file this instead Stop paying. A site demanding money to take your divorce record down has qualified itself for Google's policy on sites that charge for removal , which de-indexes a URL where you're a subject of the content, the site isn't a business review site, and the site requires payment to have the content removed . All three have to be true, and a paywalled removal meets the third one by itself. Send Google the URL, a screenshot, and enough detail to show the site charges for removal . That's the whole submission, and it's one of two Google requests you file while the page is still up, the other being the court-order route below . If a site wants a notarized affidavit, a scan of your license front and back, and re-verification every 90 days, file this instead of finishing their loop. You don't need their form, and you don't need their answer, for Google to act on the URL. The court file: seal the money, not the marriage Changing what the court itself holds means a motion to seal or redact, filed in the court that issued your judgment . There's no expungement of a divorce, so don't go looking for one. Ask for the least you can live with : name the specific financial filing and the addresses inside it. In Pennsylvania, the financial source documents, the Marital Property Inventory and the Income and Expense Statement are confidential only if they were filed under a Confidential Document Form. If yours went in without one, Section 8.0(F) of the Case Records Public Access Policy lets a party move to have it sealed after the fact. That's one state, and the statutes don't generalize, so ask your family attorney what your state's version is. The motion is itself a public filing, your ex-spouse gets notice, and they can oppose it , which can leave you with a denial plus a new searchable document explaining why you wanted it sealed. And we don't practice law : the motion is your family attorney's job, not ours. De-index last, and only after the page has changed Once the aggregator has redacted the page or taken it down, file the exact URL with Google's Refresh Outdated Content tool . It re-crawls the URL against what the live page says now, so an unchanged page gets you a rejection. Don't file it before the page changes. If a court sealed or redacted the record and a site is still showing it, that's a different submission: Google's Legal Help troubleshooter , with the specific URLs and a certified copy of the order . A granted request takes the URL out of Google. The page itself stays where it is. Skip Results about you. Google won't remove results carrying your personal contact info from pages owned by educational or government institutions, and that's every county clerk and state judiciary portal. Re-check at 30, 90 and 180 days, and what never comes off Re-search your name at 30, 90 and 180 days and re-file anything that's back. UniCourt takes one request per record, so every new URL is its own submission . Every form here is free, so what this costs you is the time to run those searches and send the forms again. Sealing the court file doesn't delete the copies already scraped. Once you have the order, send it to each republisher yourself, one at a time. Redacting an aggregator page seals nothing and expunges nothing in the court's own file. News coverage doesn't move. If the case produced a written appellate opinion, that one doesn't move either. If your name is uncommon and the docket sits on a state judiciary portal, suppression rather than removal is the honest outcome . On this page Collect the exact URLs before you file anything File the UniCourt redaction request Then Trellis, straight from the docket page If a site is charging you, file this instead The court file: seal the money, not the marriage De-index last, and only after the page has changed Re-check at 30, 90 and 180 days, and what never comes off Written by Drew Chapin → Updated 2026-09-08 Rather not do this yourself? Court Record Removal → Related guides How to remove your record from UniCourt → How to remove your record from Trellis → We'll file every one of these for you You've got the two free forms. If the same case is also on sites you haven't found yet, Court Record Removal is $199, one time : every legal aggregator we can reach, plus twelve months of re-submission for anything that shows up again. Have us do it. Everything above, filed for you, chased for you, and reported back. One flat fee. See the service → Every guide we publish is free and ungated. Browse all of them , see what we do and what it costs , or read why we built this company . Written by Drew Chapin , who ran all of this on his own name first. © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## How to remove eviction records from Google and tenant screening reports
URL: https://discoverability.co/guides/remove-eviction-records-from-google/

Home / Guides / Court record removal: what actually comes down Guide How to remove eviction records from Google and tenant screening reports Start with the tenant screening file, not with Google. That file is what a landlord reads when you apply, and disputing it in writing is free and runs 30 days. The court docket is a separate job on a separate track, and it moves only where your state has a sealing statute. Pull the file today, send the dispute, then check whether your state seals the case at all. What you actually get The screening company deletes the line from your file . Google removes nothing , and the court's docket stays put unless your state seals it. What SafeRent makes you send A legible government-issued ID , plus a second document dated within the last 60 days proving your current address if it differs from the ID, plus your Social Security card if the ID has been expired more than 30 days. Supporting documentation is required, not optional : court documents, a letter from the property or landlord, receipts, correspondence. Every other company sets its own list , so build a fresh packet for each one. What stops it working If the eviction is real, recent, and ended in a judgment for the landlord, and your state has no sealing statute, the company can verify the item and keep reporting it for seven years from the date of entry under 15 U.S.C. 1681c . Check your state's sealing statute before you spend anything , because that's the only lever left once the record is accurate. Get the adverse action notice, then pull your file Get the adverse action notice from the landlord first. If a report is why you were turned down, that notice names the company that produced it: name, address, and phone. Without it you're guessing across eight companies that don't share files: SafeRent, RealPage, Experian RentBureau, TransUnion SmartMove, First Advantage, Contemporary Information Corp, Screening Reports Inc, and LexisNexis. Then ask that company for your file. You're entitled to a free copy if you request it within 60 days of the denial , per the CFPB's Review your rental background check , and SafeRent sends its file disclosure within three business days of a request through its consumer support page . Nobody may charge you for it. Read the file against the real docket Open your case on the court's own docket and read it against the report, line by line. You're looking for a filing reported as a judgment, a dismissal reported as a loss, or a disposition missing entirely. That gap is the dispute. Write down the case number, the filing date, the property address, and in one sentence what the report has wrong. If the case is in California, check this before anything else. Under CCP 1161.2 the clerk masks an unlawful detainer file from non-parties for 60 days, and it stays masked unless the landlord won inside that window. Dispute it with the screening company, and don't file a sealing motion you don't need. Send a written dispute to each company, one at a time Every company needs its own written dispute with its own ID packet , and fixing SafeRent does nothing at RealPage. SafeRent takes disputes on its Dispute Request Form , and RealPage runs its own through a form on its consumer page , which wants two of four identifiers: state ID, last four of your Social Security number, date of birth, or your last three addresses. Check the opt-out box in Section D before you sign the SafeRent form and send it. Left alone, SafeRent sends your dispute results to every client you screened with in the last 60 days, automatically. Then send the packet to Consumer@SafeRentSolutions.com, or to SafeRent Solutions, Consumer Relations Department, P.O. Box 3890, Coppell TX 75019, and call (888) 333-2413 if something on the form is unclear. Send the same packet to every other company holding a copy, separately, and keep proof of what you mailed. No company may charge you to dispute , and 15 U.S.C. 1681i is what makes them act on it: 30 days to reinvestigate, and anything inaccurate, incomplete, or unverifiable gets deleted or corrected. Check whether your state seals the court record Check your own state's statute before you pay anyone to file anything. California masks the file automatically under CCP 1161.2, with no petition to file. Massachusetts lets you petition to seal under G.L. c.239 s.16 : any time after the case ends if it was no-fault, dismissed, or you won; not less than four years for nonpayment, with a certification that the nonpayment was due to economic hardship; not less than seven years for fault. Minnesota expunges under Minn. Stat. 484.014 , and the court orders it without a motion when you prevailed, the complaint was dismissed for any reason, the parties agreed to it, or three years have passed since the eviction was ordered. Nevada seals automatically under NRS 40.2545 on dismissal, ten judicial days after a denial, and 31 days after a tenant affidavit the landlord never answered. Texas has no route. The Texas State Law Library says the state has no process to remove or seal an eviction from your record. If you were rejected in Philadelphia, you're on two clocks instead : tell the landlord you intend to dispute within 48 hours of the rejection notice, and get your evidence in within seven business days, per the city's Renters' Access Act tenant screening guidelines . If you get a sealing order, mail it yourself The court won't tell the screening companies anything. Mail a copy of the order to every company that reported the case, then call each one to confirm the item stopped reporting. Send it with the same packet you'd send for a dispute, and say plainly what you want done: the case number, the property address, and one line stating the record is sealed and has to come off the report. Assume the order does nothing until it's in the mail with your name on it. In Massachusetts, date your letter and diary the deadline. The statute gives a reporting agency 30 days from the sealing to get the record off your report, so you have a fixed day to call back on. What to expect, and what to do when nothing moves Each dispute runs 30 days , 45 if you send new information while it's open, and the results reach you within five business days of completion. Nothing in these statutes sets a deadline for the court's decision , so keep the screening dispute moving while the court takes its time. If a company verifies the item, it can keep reporting it, and it can end a reinvestigation it deems frivolous. If a deleted item comes back, you get written notice within five business days, and that notice is your opening to go back at them. What this doesn't reach, and what it costs you Removing an aggregator's copy doesn't seal, expunge, or alter the court's own record. Some aggregators offer nothing to remove at all: judyrecords' terms page carries no removal procedure, no form, and no contact, so don't spend an afternoon hunting for one. Every step here is free except a court filing fee, and you can ask the court to waive that with an in forma pauperis request. What it costs you is assembly : one ID packet per company, each one mailed, each carrying its own case numbers, property addresses, and a specific written reason. Start with the screening file. On this page Get the adverse action notice, then pull your file Read the file against the real docket Send a written dispute to each company, one at a time Check whether your state seals the court record If you get a sealing order, mail it yourself What to expect, and what to do when nothing moves What this doesn't reach, and what it costs you Written by Drew Chapin → Updated 2026-09-08 Rather not do this yourself? Court Record Removal → Related guides Remove small claims records from Google → How to remove bankruptcy records from Google → The docket copies are ours to chase The screening dispute is free and it's yours to send. Court Record Removal, $199 one time , is the other half: we go after the aggregator copies of the docket so you're not chasing legal sites one at a time. Have us do it. Everything above, filed for you, chased for you, and reported back. One flat fee. See the service → Every guide we publish is free and ungated. Browse all of them , see what we do and what it costs , or read why we built this company . Written by Drew Chapin , who ran all of this on his own name first. © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## Remove small claims records from Google
URL: https://discoverability.co/guides/remove-small-claims-records-from-google/

Home / Guides / Court record removal: what actually comes down Guide Remove small claims records from Google You searched your name and found your small claims case on a site you'd never heard of. Two of those sites take a removal request today and one only takes an email , and the court that entered the judgment runs a deadline you may still be inside. Collect the URLs first, then check that deadline before you file anything, because it's the only part of this that expires. Redacted, not deleted Trellis takes your name off the docket page and limits access to logged-out visitors as a courtesy , which is its own wording, and that isn't deletion. UniCourt de-indexes the URL and says it decides within 30 days and answers in writing , while stating it doesn't control the search engines. Don't judge either one from an incognito window , because that's the exact view a redaction changes. Send the order, not the story UniCourt wants the exact case page URL , your relationship to the record, your reason, and documentation that matches that reason. The document that carries weight is a court order sealing or expunging the case , and Trellis requires an Order to Seal from the applicable court for anything past redaction. An attorney filing for you supplies a bar number and bar state. An assertion is not evidence UniCourt accepts requests only from the party, their legal guardian or fiduciary, or their attorney , and it only considers requests that arrive with documentation backing the reason you give. It weighs sealing or expungement, physical harm, identity theft and harm to a minor, and says that list is not exclusive , so send the request even when none of the four fits your case. Copy the exact URL that's ranking Search your own name in a private window and copy the full address of every result carrying the case , more than the top one. Every route below needs that exact page URL. This page covers unicourt.com, trellis.law and judyrecords.com. Check the host on each one. If the address ends in .gov, that's the court's own docket and nothing on this page reaches it. Google's results-about-you policy declines removal for pages owned by government institutions, so set those results aside and work the rest. A case indexed on five sites is five to fifteen separate submissions , each with its own proof-of-relationship step. Set aside an afternoon, and keep the list of URLs you filed on, because you'll need it again in a few months. Check your court deadline before you file anything California's small claims self-help page gives you 30 days from the Notice of Entry of Judgment to decide what you want to do. If you didn't go to the trial, you can ask the judge to cancel the decision, and that request is form SC-135 . If the other side served you the wrong way or never served you at all, the window is 180 days from when you found out or should have found out about the judgment. Check how you were served before anything else, and ask your own clerk for your state's clock. If the judgment stands and you're paying it, make sure the satisfaction gets filed . In California the other side has to file form SC-290 once you pay in full, so call the clerk afterward and confirm it landed. Ask the clerk one more question while you have them: what's the retention period on a small claims money judgment here, and when does the clock start? Utah sets six months , running from satisfaction or expiration of the judgment. Every state writes its own schedule, so get your number rather than assuming it matches. File with UniCourt Go to UniCourt's record removal form . It asks for your country and state, the exact case page URL , your relationship to the record, your name, address and contact details, your reason, and supporting documentation. It's free at every stage, including the appeal , so don't pay anyone to press submit. You have to send this one yourself. UniCourt accepts requests only from the party, their legal guardian or fiduciary, or their attorney. If an attorney files it for you, they'll supply a bar number and bar state on the form. Pick the reason that matches a document you actually hold, then attach it. UniCourt asks whether the record was sealed or expunged by a court order , whether it exposes you to increased risk of physical harm, whether it's the result of identity theft, or whether it concerns and adversely affects a minor. It says it typically decides within 30 days and answers in writing. If the answer is no, you have 30 days from that notice to appeal , and an appeal only counts if you attach substantive new information or documentation. Appeals are final , so don't send the first request thin and plan to fix it later. File with Trellis from the docket page, not the form Trellis takes a request only when it starts on the record itself. Its support page says requests must be submitted by pressing the Request Redaction button directly on the URL you want redacted . Search your name on trellis.law, open the docket page, and use that button. Email requests are not processed , in Trellis's own words. The form asks for your name, your email, whether the record is about you, and why you want it redacted. One submission covers one docket URL , so three cases means three forms. Trellis charges nothing for any of it. Redaction removes public and logged-out access and asks search engines not to index the record, and Trellis states plainly that it doesn't control Google . For deletion rather than redaction, upload an Order to Seal from the applicable court , which Trellis says it processes immediately. Without an order, requests go in the order they're received, so don't chase it on day three. If the answer is no, your next move is the court order, not a second form . judyrecords takes an email and nothing else judyrecords' info page publishes no opt-out, no criteria and no timeline, only two contact addresses. Email info@judyrecords.com with the exact URL, your name, and one line saying the record is about you , and keep it to that. Expect nothing back on a schedule. Note the date you sent it, put it on your list with the others, and move to the next site instead of waiting. Send it to Google only after the page changes Google's Refresh Outdated Content tool is the last step, never the first. It works only once the page is gone or significantly different , and Google says outright that if the information is still on the live page, the tool is not for you . Submit it the day you find the result and you've spent the request for nothing. An approved request expires after 180 days , so set a reminder for month five and search your name again then. Don't aim it at the court's own .gov docket, which Google won't take down. What this won't do, and when to check again None of this seals or expunges the court's own record. Satisfying or vacating the judgment doesn't delete the docket entry either. Valid judgment, proper service, still unsatisfied, sitting on a government portal, and there's nothing to file . Anything you clear off the copy sites can come back. Search your own name every few months and re-file on whatever's returned. Work from the list of URLs you built in step one. If the damage is a background check rather than Google, that's a different form. Dispute the entry with the screening company and attach the satisfaction or the vacatur order. And nobody should charge you to pull a judgment off a credit report . On this page Copy the exact URL that's ranking Check your court deadline before you file anything File with UniCourt File with Trellis from the docket page, not the form judyrecords takes an email and nothing else Send it to Google only after the page changes What this won't do, and when to check again Written by Drew Chapin → Updated 2026-09-08 Rather not do this yourself? Court Record Removal → Related guides How to remove your record from UniCourt → How to remove your record from Trellis → We'll take the copy sites UniCourt has to come from you, but everything else on that list is ours. Court Record Removal is $199 , and we file with every copy site we can reach, then keep re-filing for twelve months . Have us do it. Everything above, filed for you, chased for you, and reported back. One flat fee. See the service → Every guide we publish is free and ungated. Browse all of them , see what we do and what it costs , or read why we built this company . Written by Drew Chapin , who ran all of this on his own name first. © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## How to remove your info from BeenVerified
URL: https://discoverability.co/guides/remove-your-info-from-beenverified/

Home / Guides / Personal information removal: a dozen sites, a dozen forms, and they repost Guide How to remove your info from BeenVerified BeenVerified will take your listing off its site. It won't delete what's behind it. Their own published privacy-rights disclosure says that where data came from an outside source it was not subject to deletion by us and was instead opted out of our services so that it would no longer be displayed . Here's the real opt-out URL, the email route when the form won't load, and the eight other sites the same company runs. You get it hidden, not deleted BeenVerified's own privacy rights metrics page footnotes what a delete request actually buys. Where information originated from an independent third-party data source and was not subject to deletion by us , it was instead opted out of our services so that it would no longer be displayed . The listing stops showing. The record behind it stays exactly where it is. What the form demands is unconfirmed We couldn't load it. BeenVerified fronts its opt-out with an anti-bot challenge that blocks automated clients, and a click path nobody has seen isn't one we'll print . What their policy does say: they run an identity check, they deny requests for inability to verify the identity of the requestor and for discrepancies between the information provided and our records , and no ID upload is mentioned anywhere in it . One form covers one site of nine The same company also publishes you on PeopleLooker, NeighborWho, Ownerly, NumberGuru, Bumper, PeopleSmart, ReversePhone and MoneyBot5000 . BeenVerified never says a single request covers the other eight , and each runs its own form on its own domain, so file all nine. Find the exact listing before you file Search your full name in quotes, add your city, and open the BeenVerified result that comes back. Copy the exact URL out of the address bar and keep it where you can paste from. Write down every address and every relative's name the page shows you, because those are the details their matcher has to line up against when you ask for it to come down. Note who else is holding your first page while you're looking. Nothing in their privacy policy or their terms attaches a fee to a removal request , and the terms say only this about the whole thing: if you wish to remove your personal information from the Site, please visit the Opt-out page . That one sentence is everything the terms say about it. Open the opt-out on a normal browser and a normal connection The form is at beenverified.com/svc/optout/search/ . The short address most guides print, /optout, still redirects there , and so does the older /app/optout/search, so a stale link forwards rather than fails. But /opt-out/, /do-not-sell/, /ccpa/ and /dsar/ are all 404s , checked September 8, 2026, and a guide pointing you at one of those hasn't been opened in a long time. Load it in a regular browser on your home connection. The opt-out is the most bot-hostile page on the domain : the homepage serves instantly and this one answers automated clients with a challenge they don't clear. A VPN, a locked-down work network or an automated removal tool can stall here, and a tool that stalls can still hand you a receipt . Verify by searching your own name afterward, never by trusting a confirmation screen. If the form won't load, email the request instead Their privacy policy sanctions it outright. Section 18.3 says you may exercise your opt-out, access or deletion rights by filling out our online request form, emailing us at privacy@beenverified.com, or contacting us via the phone number or postal address listed above . Email isn't a fallback, it's one of the three routes they name themselves , and it goes around the challenge wall completely. Give them what their matcher needs. Their policy tells an authorized agent that a delete or right-to-know request has to carry first, middle and last name, a valid email address, age and address , so hand over that same set for yourself, plus every address the listing displays and the exact profile URLs you copied. The postal address it keeps referring to is a dead end : the only postal addresses it lists are its EU and UK data-protection representatives, and it never lists a phone number at all. Their general contact form loads normally and carries a Do Not Sell My Info topic in its dropdown. It isn't the documented opt-out route, so send it as a second copy of your request, not as the request . Two forms, and the one their own policy uses There are two opt-out flows and BeenVerified never explains the difference between them. The footer link, Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information , goes to /svc/optout/search/optouts . The privacy policy's own online request form link, the one it hands you for right to know, right to delete and right to opt out, goes somewhere different: /svc/optout/search/comprehensive_optouts . Use the one their policy uses for rights requests. Nothing published anywhere says what the comprehensive flow adds, and picking the narrower one would under-remove you with nothing on screen to say so. If you're emailing instead of using a form, name the rights you're exercising in the message: opt out and delete , rather than asking them to remove you. What comes back, and how long their own numbers say it takes No page states how long the listing takes to disappear. What BeenVerified publishes is its 2025 California request metrics , and those measure time to respond , not time to vanish: opt-out requests averaged 9 days with a median of 10, delete requests averaged 4 with a median of 1. Their California notice separately promises a response to a verifiable request within forty-five days, extendable to ninety with written notice . Anyone quoting you 24 hours invented it. The same page shows which requests get refused. Opt-outs: 68,352 received, 68,352 complied with, none denied. Requests to Know: 660 received and 342 denied . So the suppression request sails through, and the request that would tell you what they actually hold is the one that gets turned down. Don't re-file to be safe , either: their listed denial reasons include prior removal under another request, including duplicate submissions. If yours is refused and you live in Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Iowa, Maryland, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas or Virginia, you have a right to appeal . Email privacy@beenverified.com, say which state you're writing from , and attach what you have. If the appeal fails, the policy links your state Attorney General, and that complaint is your practical lever: BeenVerified isn't a consumer reporting agency, so no FCRA dispute rights attach , and their terms force individual arbitration with a class-action waiver. Do the other eight the same day One company, nine sites, nine separate forms, and BeenVerified never says a single request covers the other eight . Each of these redirects into that brand's own opt-out: PeopleLooker , NeighborWho , Ownerly , NumberGuru , Bumper , PeopleSmart , ReversePhone and MoneyBot5000 . Do them in one sitting, while your addresses and URLs are already in front of you. Same name, same details, same anti-bot page waiting on every one . Then keep the list somewhere, because you're going to need it again at the re-check. Check it again, and what to do if Google still shows it Search your name in quotes a week after you file, then again a month later. If the BeenVerified page no longer shows your data but the Google result is still sitting there , that's an index problem rather than a removal problem: push the URL through Google's Remove Outdated Content tool , which only works once the live page has actually changed. Then re-check every quarter, and re-check straight after you move or change your name. Their own footnote is the reason. Where the data came from an outside source, that source was never touched and keeps feeding them, so a fresh ingestion under a slightly different spelling of your name or address builds a new record your old opt-out doesn't cover. Nothing notifies you when that happens. Be clear about what none of this does. It doesn't delete the underlying record, it doesn't reach the public sources that record came from, and it doesn't stop a new listing forming. Doing it yourself is nine forms today, plus a search you have to remember to run every quarter after that. On this page Find the exact listing before you file Open the opt-out on a normal browser and a normal connection If the form won't load, email the request instead Two forms, and the one their own policy uses What comes back, and how long their own numbers say it takes Do the other eight the same day Check it again, and what to do if Google still shows it Written by Drew Chapin → Updated 2026-09-08 Rather not do this yourself? Personal Information Removal → Related guides How to remove your info from Whitepages → How to remove your info from TruePeopleSearch → BeenVerified is one of nine, and nine isn't the list File the BeenVerified request yourself. When the same profile is also sitting on Whitepages, Spokeo, Radaris and the rest of them, Personal Information Removal is $399 and covers every broker we can reach, plus twelve months of monitoring , because these sites repost. Have us do it. Everything above, filed for you, chased for you, and reported back. One flat fee. See the service → Every guide we publish is free and ungated. Browse all of them , see what we do and what it costs , or read why we built this company . Written by Drew Chapin , who ran all of this on his own name first. © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## How to remove your info from FastPeopleSearch
URL: https://discoverability.co/guides/remove-your-info-from-fastpeoplesearch/

Home / Guides / Personal information removal: a dozen sites, a dozen forms, and they repost Guide How to remove your info from FastPeopleSearch FastPeopleSearch will take your listing down, and the whole thing runs on a name and an email address . No ID upload, no phone code, no document of any kind. Their own privacy notice says opt-out requests don't require verification. Two things trip people up: the emailed link dies at 24 hours , and the tracking cookies are a second, separate job. Here's the sequence in order, and what to check on day four. Suppression, not deletion The opt-out form stops the sale and sharing of your information, and their page says to allow 3 days for your record to be fully removed from the site . It is not a deletion request. Deletion, access and correction live on a separate, much heavier form at their Privacy Rights page, and doing the easy one doesn't do the other. Name and email, nothing else The first form wants first name, last name and an email address . No street address, no phone number, no link to your listing. No ID upload and no document of any kind , and their privacy notice states outright that opt-out requests do not require verification. The deletion form is the opposite, and it wants full address and phone, plus optional date of birth and listing URL . The 24-hour link is what breaks it The confirmation email isn't instant . Their wording is that it may take some time to arrive. The link inside it expires 24 hours after it's issued , and clicking it late sends you back to the beginning to redo the name, the email and the captcha. Start this when you've got time to finish it, and watch your spam folder. Open the form and say who you are Go to the FastPeopleSearch opt-out form . The first field is a dropdown labeled "I am:" with two choices: the subject of this request, or an authorized agent of the subject . Pick subject if this is your own listing. Picking agent opens three more fields for the agent's first name, last name and email. Do this by hand, in a real browser. The site sits behind Cloudflare bot protection and the form carries a Cloudflare captcha, so there's no scripted, bulk or automated path through it. If you'd rather not use the form at all, their Do Not Sell notice publishes a phone line at (866) 679-8725 . Give them a name and an email, and stop there First Name, Last Name and Email address are required. Middle Name is optional. That's the entire first form. It doesn't ask where you live, what your number is, or which page has your listing on it, so don't go hunting for any of that yet. Tick the authorization box underneath, which certifies you're the subject or an authorized agent, complete the captcha, and click SUBMIT. Use an email address you actually check , because everything from here happens in your inbox and nothing on their side will chase you. Click the emailed link the same day Their page promises the email and then hedges on when: it may take some time to arrive . Check your spam folder if it hasn't landed, because a filtered message is a silent failure here and there's no status page to tell you. The link is dead after 24 hours. Their wording: if you wait more than 24 hours to click it, you'll need to request a new one. There's no grace period and no resend button on the page, so a link you open on day two costs you the first step all over again, captcha included. Make the second form match the record The link opens the real opt-out form, and this is the step where your record actually gets identified . Their instruction is that what you enter should match the information on the record you want removed. Open your listing in another tab and copy what it shows, including the middle name and the old address if that's what's on the page. They put the warning on the opt-out page in writing: omitting information or providing inaccurate information will only hinder the opt-out process . Under-filling the form to avoid handing over more than you have to gets treated as your mistake, not theirs. Fill it out completely. Submitting lands you on a confirmation page and sends a confirmation email. Their stated window is the only timeline they publish anywhere: allow 3 days for your record to be fully removed from the site . Keep that email. It's the only receipt you get. Turn off the cookie side, which the form doesn't cover The form is half the job and they say so themselves. Their Do Not Sell notice says you must also adjust your cookie settings or send an opt-out preference signal to stop the selling and sharing that happens through their tracking technologies. The opt-out form does not do this part. Use the Cookie Management link in the site footer, or switch on Global Privacy Control in a browser that supports it. Their notice says your cookie selections are specific to the device or browser you're using , and that you'll need to renew them on a different device or browser. A phone, a laptop and a second browser are three separate jobs. Do Not Track won't work. They say plainly that they don't respond to or honor DNT signals or similar mechanisms sent by browsers. GPC is the signal that counts here. Check on day four, then keep checking Search your name again on the fourth day and click through to the listing itself , more than the Google result. A search result can outlast the page behind it, and the page coming down is the part they control. It won't stay down, and they tell you that up front. Their notice says they regularly receive new public records, so even after you opt out your information may appear in their data products again, and they recommend you periodically refresh your opt-out request . There's no permanent suppression list on offer and no case number to quote. Re-checking on a schedule is the whole maintenance plan. If you want it deleted, that's a different form Deletion, access and correction live at their Privacy Rights page , under the topic "I want to access, delete, or correct my personal information." It's a much heavier form : street address, city, state, zip and phone number, plus optional date of birth and listing URL, and its own captcha. You're handing over more than the opt-out asked for, to a site that collected your information without asking you first. That page also lists a different phone number, (866) 933-3584 . They identify you by comparing what you type against what they hold, and their stated method is to match two or three of the data points you provide . Authorized agents may be asked for signed authorization, and they keep the right to make you verify directly regardless. None of it reaches the original source. Their own notice says the opt-out won't remove the data from where it came from, so your information may still appear on other websites or through other services. They also argue that publicly available information isn't covered by state privacy laws and that they apply your request to it as a courtesy. Read that as goodwill they can withdraw. FastPeopleSearch isn't a consumer reporting agency under the FCRA by its own footer either, so the dispute and accuracy rights that work on background-check companies don't attach here . On this page Open the form and say who you are Give them a name and an email, and stop there Click the emailed link the same day Make the second form match the record Turn off the cookie side, which the form doesn't cover Check on day four, then keep checking If you want it deleted, that's a different form Written by Drew Chapin → Updated 2026-09-08 Rather not do this yourself? Personal Information Removal → Related guides How to remove your info from TruePeopleSearch → How to remove your info from Whitepages → FastPeopleSearch is one site on a long list Send the FastPeopleSearch request yourself. It's free, and if that's the only site carrying your address you don't need us. When the same name and address also sit on Whitepages, Spokeo, Radaris and TruePeopleSearch, Personal Information Removal is $399, one time : we work the whole broker network, and twelve months of monitoring catches the listings that come back. Have us do it. Everything above, filed for you, chased for you, and reported back. One flat fee. See the service → Every guide we publish is free and ungated. Browse all of them , see what we do and what it costs , or read why we built this company . Written by Drew Chapin , who ran all of this on his own name first. © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## How to remove your info from TruePeopleSearch
URL: https://discoverability.co/guides/remove-your-info-from-truepeoplesearch/

Home / Guides / Personal information removal: a dozen sites, a dozen forms, and they repost Guide How to remove your info from TruePeopleSearch TruePeopleSearch will take your listing down, and their own privacy notice says opt-out requests do not require verification . The form is at truepeoplesearch.com/removal, and they publish 888-838-4803 as an equal route . What they won't do is keep you off permanently: they say on three separate pages that new public records put your listing back. Here's the fastest path today, what you hand over, and the date to check again. Off their site, not deleted TruePeopleSearch takes your record off truepeoplesearch.com. Their privacy notice calls that applying your request to publicly available information as a courtesy , and says in the same breath it will not remove the data from its original source , so your information may still appear on other websites or be accessible through other services . One site cleared, not a deletion. Checked September 8, 2026. No ID, and no accounts Their Privacy Notice and their state supplemental notice carry the identical sentence: opt-out requests do not require verification . No government ID, no notarization, and no account to create, because their help page says the site has no user accounts at all . What the form asks for on screen, we won't tell you: it sits behind an anti-bot challenge and never rendered for us. Anyone listing those fields with confidence didn't load the page either. One opt-out in three is denied Their own CCPA disclosure for 2025: 155,567 opt-out requests received, 103,727 complied with, 51,840 denied . They give two reasons. The person was not a covered consumer under an applicable privacy law , or they could not locate relevant records . Only the second one is yours to fix, so hand them the exact URL of your listing instead of describing yourself. Find your listing and copy its exact URL Search your own name on TruePeopleSearch, open the record that's actually you, and copy the URL out of the address bar . Do that before you touch the opt-out form. One of the two reasons they publish for denying an opt-out is that they were unable to locate relevant records in their system, and giving them the precise URL is the part of that you control. Run their other searches while you're there. The site has separate reverse phone, address and email lookups , so a name search is only one way in. Their help page says a record can carry current and past addresses, phone numbers, relatives, friends, roommates, email addresses and business ownership , so check old addresses and name variants too, and write down every URL you find. Open the opt-out form, by hand The opt-out lives at truepeoplesearch.com/removal , and that isn't a guess. The words Opt-Out Form on both their Privacy Notice and their Notice of Right to Opt-Out link straight to it, and their help page sends you to the same place with one instruction: follow the instructions to the letter . Do it yourself, in a normal browser. That page sits behind an anti-bot challenge. Every other page on the site loaded instantly for us and the removal page never rendered its form, which is also why scripts, extensions and bulk removal tools break at that wall . We're not going to describe buttons on a page we couldn't read, and no honest guide should. There's no promised turnaround published anywhere. What they do publish is 2025 performance: on opt-out requests, an average and median reply time of under one day . That's a reply, and it's history rather than a commitment. Nothing on the site lets you check your own status afterward , because there are no accounts to log into. If the form won't work, call 888-838-4803 888-838-4803 isn't a fallback they buried. Their Privacy Notice, their do-not-sell notice and their state supplemental notice all list calling that number as one of the two ways to opt out, equal to the online form. If the human check keeps looping, if the form errors, or if you'd rather have it done while you're on the phone, use the number . The third route is their help center , where How do I remove my record from your site? is a topic you can pick from the dropdown. Their FAQ is honest about the trade: if you can't get the automated system to work, contact them and they'll take care of it, but that takes a bit longer . Form first, then the phone, then the help center. Don't file this as a legal deletion demand There's a second, heavier form at truepeoplesearch.com/privacy-rights for a formal Right to Know, Delete or Correct. Skip it. Their own disclosure for calendar year 2025 reports 168 Right to Delete requests received and 168 denied . Complied in whole: zero. Complied in part: zero. The reason is written into their privacy notice. They assert their data products use publicly available information, which is not covered by U.S. state privacy laws , and that honoring your opt-out against that information is done as a courtesy . So the opt-out is the door that opens, and on their own published numbers the deletion demand is the one that doesn't. That form also costs you more than the opt-out does. It asks for your date of birth, your full street address, your phone number and the URL of the listing , and unlike an opt-out it gets verified: they match two or three of your data points against their records and may reach out for additional information if they can't. You'd be handing a data broker fresh identifiers in exchange for a refusal. Clear the Google result, or nothing looks different Coming off TruePeopleSearch doesn't change what Google shows, and their own FAQ says so before pointing at the fix. Removing the listing and refreshing the search result are two separate jobs , and the second one is the reason your name still looks the way it looked this morning. The tool is at search.google.com/search-console/remove-outdated-content , and you'll need to sign in with a Google account to use it. Paste in the listing URL you copied in step one. Per Google's own documentation , it drops the page from results when the page is gone, and strips the snippet when the page still exists but its content changed, until Google crawls it again. File one request per URL . The tool acts on the address you give it, so a second record under an old address or a name variant needs its own request. Put a date on the calendar, because it comes back They tell you this themselves, in the same sentence on three different pages: we regularly receive new public records so even if you opt out, your publicly available information may appear in our Data Products again in the future . Their recommendation is that you periodically refresh your opt-out request . They don't say how often, and nobody there will tell you when you're back. So treat this as maintenance rather than a fix. There's no dashboard, no login and no status page , which leaves searching your own name on the site as the only way to check. Pick an interval you'll actually keep, put it in the calendar, and run steps one through three again the day the record turns up. What the opt-out doesn't touch It doesn't reach the source. In their words, an opt-out will not remove the data from its original source , which means your information may still appear on other websites or be accessible through other services . Every other people-search site carrying the same records is its own request, its own form, and its own wait. It can't correct anything either. Their help page is blunt: if you see information that is incorrect on a subject, we don't currently offer a way to change it . Removal is the only lever, and there's no dispute process sitting behind it, because TruePeopleSearch is not a consumer reporting agency , a line they print in the footer of every page. And don't mistake a browser setting for a removal. They state that they do not respond to or honor Do Not Track signals , and while they accept Global Privacy Control, their own text says a GPC signal does not opt you out of the information we provide as part of our Data Products and Services . Your cookie preferences and your listing are two different chores. On this page Find your listing and copy its exact URL Open the opt-out form, by hand If the form won't work, call 888-838-4803 Don't file this as a legal deletion demand Clear the Google result, or nothing looks different Put a date on the calendar, because it comes back What the opt-out doesn't touch Written by Drew Chapin → Updated 2026-09-08 Rather not do this yourself? Personal Information Removal → TruePeopleSearch is one site, and it reposts Send the opt-out yourself, it's free and it takes an evening. When the same address and the same relatives' names are also sitting on the people-search sites you haven't found yet, Personal Information Removal is $399 , covers the whole broker network, and includes twelve months of monitoring with a fresh removal filed every time one of them puts you back. Have us do it. Everything above, filed for you, chased for you, and reported back. One flat fee. See the service → Every guide we publish is free and ungated. Browse all of them , see what we do and what it costs , or read why we built this company . Written by Drew Chapin , who ran all of this on his own name first. © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## How to remove your name from Google search results
URL: https://discoverability.co/guides/remove-your-name-from-google-search/

Home / Guides / Reputation management: four problems on one page Record types How to remove your name from Google search results There's no request that removes your name from Google. Every tool Google publishes works one URL at a time , and none of them deletes anything. The site owner controls the page, which is why your first email goes to them, not to Google. The work is a list of exact addresses and the right form for each one. Here's that order, and what each request actually buys you. Hidden from Google, still on the web A granted request pulls one URL out of Google's results. The page stays live at the same address, opens for anyone holding the link, and keeps ranking on Bing and DuckDuckGo. Google says it in its own words on its removal options page : "While we can prevent content from appearing in our search results, we can't remove it from websites that host it." Only the site owner deletes. No ID, but you hand over a dossier The form's first screen marks two fields required: the reason radio and "Your country of residence" . The screen after it requires more: "Select the personal information you would like removed" , "Specific content URLs" , "Google Search results page URLs" and "Search terms" , plus screenshots so Google can locate the information on the page. No government ID upload; for a confidential ID number the form asks only for the last four characters as they appear on the reported page. The real cost runs the other way: to switch on monitoring you give Google every address, phone number, email, nickname and maiden name , and it will take your Social Security, passport and driver's license numbers too. The public-interest carve-out kills most of it Google's policy says that "if the content is about something important or newsworthy, like the news, Google might not take it down." The self-serve tool won't act on results from websites owned by educational or government institutions, or newspapers . A news article, a county portal or a university page is the ordinary case, not the edge case, and filing there ordinarily comes back denied; the route that works on those pages is the publisher or a court order . Build the URL list before you open a single form Search your full name in quotes, then your name plus your city, your name plus your employer, and your name with a middle initial, and go several result pages deep on each one. Copy the exact address out of the browser bar for every hit, not the link off the results page. Google reviews only the URLs you submit and doesn't go looking for the rest , so a page you didn't find is a page that stays. Screenshot each one while it's up, and write down the search terms that produced it. Google asks for screenshots so it can locate the information on the page , and rebuilding this list a week later is where most people quit. Put the URLs and the shots in one document now and every request below takes minutes instead of an evening. Email the site owner first, because it's the only step that deletes anything Google sends you here before anywhere else, on a page called Contact a website owner . Look for a "Contact us" link on the site. If there isn't one, search google.com for whois www.example.com and take the address listed under "Registrant Email" or "Administrative Contact" . That same lookup names the hosting company, which is who you write to when the owner never answers. Ask for deletion, name the URL, and keep it to two sentences. This is the only request in this guide that takes the information off the internet. Everything after it changes what Google shows and nothing else. If the owner deletes the page or edits your details out of it, go straight to the refresh step so Google picks the change up. Switch on Results about you and feed it every version of your name Go to myactivity.google.com/results-about-you and sign in. Signed out it's a "Sign in to get started" wall, and there's no anonymous version. Press "Get started" , then enter the name and the information you want watched: nickname, maiden name, every phone number, every address, every email address. The matcher keys off name plus information, so a variant you skip is a result you never see. Google says that, if you have notifications on, you'll get one within a few hours when a search result matches, and matches appear in the "To review" tab. Open a result, press "Request to remove" , choose "It shows my personal info and I don't want it there" , then "Contact Info" , and submit. Track everything under "Removal requests" , where each one reads In progress, Approved, Denied or Undone. Two limits before you lean on this. Google's help page says the feature is "currently rolling out for users who are over the age of 18 in certain markets" and never names the markets. And it handles contact details only : the flow forces you through Contact Info, so news stories, mugshots, dockets, lawsuits and reviews are not this tool's job . Those go through the form below or nowhere. File the removal form for everything the tool won't touch The personal content removal form is reached from any Google help page with the "Start removal request" button. Its first screen asks "Why are you requesting personal content removal from Google Search?" with four options: nudity or sexual material, "Content contains your personal information" , a site with exploitative removal practices, or a person under 18. Pick the personal information branch, then give "Your country of residence" . The eligible list is literal, and Google spells it out : "Your address, phone number, or email" , confidential government IDs like Social Security or tax ID numbers, your bank account or credit card number, "Pictures of your signature or ID" , "Private records, like medical records" , and confidential usernames and passwords. Quote the exact line on the page that carries one of those rather than describing what the page is about. Doxxing is a second route with two conditions, and either one on its own is enough : your personal info alongside "explicit or implicit threats against you (or calls for others to harm or harass you)" , or "A significant amount of aggregated personal info without a legitimate purpose." That second prong is the one that fits a people-search profile, it does not require a threat , and most published guides leave it out entirely. If the site demands money to take the page down, pick "Content is on a site with exploitative removal practices" instead. All three conditions have to hold : you're a subject of the content, "The website is not a business review site" , and the site "requires payment to the site or other agencies to have the content removed." Yelp and Google reviews are business review sites, so this route is shut there. Screenshot the payment demand before you touch anything , because paying it deletes your only evidence along with the page. Force the re-crawl, but only after the page is down Refresh outdated content bounces you to a Google sign-in, so have an account open before you start. Press "Request refresh" , then on the "Page" tab enter the URL and press "Submit" . For a picture, press "Request refresh" , choose "New request" and then "Image" , paste the image link you copied from image search, and press "Submit" . What you filed shows up under "Refresh outdated content" . This tool only re-crawls. It removes nothing. If the live page still shows your information, the request fails, and no amount of resubmitting changes that. Run it the day after the site takes the page down or edits it, and go back to the site owner if it gets rejected , because a rejection here is telling you the source never actually changed. The legal route, and who it's really for Report Content for Legal Reasons opens with a "Create a request" button that lands you in the legal troubleshooter . It starts by asking you to "Select the Google product where the content you are reporting appears" , then whether the issue is a legal one or a policy violation. Note what it tells you next: "You must submit a separate report for each Google product where the content appears" , so Search, Maps and YouTube are three separate filings. This is where a court order goes, and getting the order is separate work in a real court, not a Google process . Google states the ceiling on the same page: "We can restrict access to content that appears in Google products and services, but that content may still exist elsewhere on the web." An order sitting in your inbox does nothing at Google until you file it here yourself. Right to be Forgotten is European data protection law and it needs four things: the URLs, "A description of how the content is related to you, and why we should delist it" , "The search query for which you'd like us to delist the content, i.e., your full name" , and a contact email. Even granted it stays narrow: "We'll only delist content from search results for queries related to your name" , and Google delists from "versions of Google's search results for countries applying European data protection law." There's no US equivalent, and a searcher in the US still sees the result. Put a date in the calendar, and know what none of this fixes Set a reminder two weeks out and run the identical searches again . A removal is bound to one address, so the page you got delisted stays delisted, and a result that reappears is almost always a new URL needing a brand new request . Results about you tells you when it matches something; it removes nothing on its own , and an empty "To review" tab looks exactly like being clean. Google publishes no decision turnaround for any of these routes. With notifications on you get a match notification within a few hours, and a legal request comes back with an email confirmation carrying a reference number. Nothing else is promised, and anyone quoting you a number of days for a Google decision invented it . If Google emails asking for clarification, answer it, because an unanswered question stalls the request indefinitely. A denial on a newspaper, a government site or a university page usually isn't arguable, and the answer there is the publisher or a court order rather than a second submission. If you were denied for no qualifying category, re-read the doxxing aggregation prong before you resend the same claim . And the honest version of the big question: no Google process makes your whole name quiet . What does that is deletion at the source plus better pages of your own outranking what's left. On this page Build the URL list before you open a single form Email the site owner first, because it's the only step that deletes anything Switch on Results about you and feed it every version of your name File the removal form for everything the tool won't touch Force the re-crawl, but only after the page is down The legal route, and who it's really for Put a date in the calendar, and know what none of this fixes Written by Drew Chapin → Updated 2026-09-08 Rather not do this yourself? Personal Reputation Management → Related guides How to make your home address unsearchable → How to use Google's removal tools on a court record → The list is the job File the Google requests yourself, because they're free and you can start on them tonight. When the list runs longer than an evening, or the pages ranking on your name are the ones Google won't touch , our Personal Reputation Management service is $2,488, one time, and we work the whole first page: the removals we can file, the site owners we have to write to, and accurate pages built for whatever stays. Have us do it. Everything above, filed for you, chased for you, and reported back. One flat fee. See the service → Every guide we publish is free and ungated. Browse all of them , see what we do and what it costs , or read why we built this company . Written by Drew Chapin , who ran all of this on his own name first. © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## How to remove your record from CourtListener
URL: https://discoverability.co/guides/remove-your-record-from-courtlistener/

Home / Guides / Court record removal: what actually comes down Guide How to remove your record from CourtListener One free request through CourtListener's contact form gets them to block search engines from indexing your page. No ID, no fee, no lawyer. It won't delete anything, and it only works if you send the right URL, so find the page that's actually ranking before you write to anyone. Then work the copies one site at a time, because CourtListener is almost never the only place your case is sitting. What you actually get CourtListener will block search engines from indexing the page. They won't delete it. The case stays on their site at the same address, and anyone doing legal research on CourtListener or another legal database still finds it. Deletion is a separate ask, and their policy is blunt about it: no public document comes down without a court order. What you have to send A message through their contact form carrying the exact links to the pages you want blocked. That's the entire requirement: no government ID, no docket number, no notarization, no fee. Send it yourself in a real browser, because the form sits behind a captcha and there's nothing to automate. What stops it working Sending the wrong URL. A RECAP document page is already blocked, so a request about one changes nothing, and the docket page is the one to send . If the result ranking on your name lives on some other site, blocking CourtListener moves nothing at all. Find the URL that's actually ranking Search your full name in quotes, then your name plus the case caption, and copy the CourtListener link out of the result exactly as it appears. Send the URL that ranks. Only if the link ends in a document number, climb back up to the docket it belongs to and send that instead. Check who else is holding your case before you spend a minute on CourtListener. Look at the issuing court's own website, then search Justia, Casetext, Leagle, vLex, anylaw and Google Scholar by name. If CourtListener isn't on your first page of results, this isn't your problem to solve today . Send the de-index request The request goes through CourtListener's contact form , which opens with Case Removal Request already selected in the topic menu. It asks for a name, an email, a subject and a message, then a captcha, so you're sending this one by hand. Paste the URLs. Don't describe the case. A message that does the job: "I am the person named in the pages below. Under your content removal policy, please block them from search engine indexing." Then one URL per line and nothing else. Budget half an hour , nearly all of it spent finding the right URLs rather than writing the message. Anyone invoicing you a CourtListener removal fee is charging you to send a contact-form message. Don't hunt around their site for a removal page either, because the old one is gone and the contact form is the whole route. What happens after you send it Blocking the opinion page also blocks the docket it sits under, so one URL does both . It does not run the other way, so if a docket and an opinion page both rank, list both. Nobody can give you a date. CourtListener publishes no turnaround, no acknowledgment window and no service level, and their policy warns up front that they have no control over any search engine and your case may sit in the results for many months, if at all. Don't pay anyone who promises you a date. Send it once and leave it alone. There's no status page to check and no second address to try , so spend the waiting time on the copies sitting on the other sites. If it's still on your name later Search your name again once a month. If the CourtListener link is gone and your case is still on the first page, you're looking at another site's copy. Some copies a block never reaches, and every one of them takes its own request . Send the CourtListener request a second time if the page comes back . They make no guarantee that a blocked record stays blocked, and every block granted without a court order is theirs to reverse. A repeat request costs you the same few minutes as the first one. If you need it actually deleted Two things, both required: the information deleted from the public record, and a court order demanding that Free Law Project do the same. Their content removal policy states both conditions, and it's the only route to deletion they recognize. An order aimed at a court clerk or a state agency doesn't reach them. They've refused a federal judge's removal order before and fought it rather than complying, so if you're paying a lawyer for an order, budget for the chance it gets contested instead of honored. With an expungement or redaction order, expect anonymization rather than deletion : names replaced with initials or black boxes, plus a permanent note at the top of the document saying the change was made. One order also covers one document, so name every filing you want touched , because they won't change the others unless the order specifically requires it. None of this touches the court's own record. Taking down an aggregator copy seals nothing, expunges nothing, and changes not one line in the clerk's file or in PACER. That's a motion in the court that issued the filing, and it's separate work. What not to do Don't sue them. Free Law Project says it has been sued over publishing court documents and has never lost, and one plaintiff's push to bury her case ended with the entire docket unsealed and the fight written up in public. Their terms also fix venue in California, so a plaintiff anywhere else is litigating away from home. Don't file a credit-report style dispute either. Free Law Project isn't a consumer reporting agency , and their terms of service bar using the site for credit, insurance, employment or housing decisions. There's no dispute to file here and nothing that ages off on its own. On this page Find the URL that's actually ranking Send the de-index request What happens after you send it If it's still on your name later If you need it actually deleted What not to do Written by Drew Chapin → Updated 2026-09-08 Rather not do this yourself? Court Record Removal → Related guides How to remove your record from Justia → How to remove your record from PacerMonitor → CourtListener is one site on a list Sending the CourtListener request yourself is free, and you should send it today. When the same case is also sitting on Justia, UniCourt, CaseMine and PacerMonitor, our Court Record Removal service is $199 and we work every aggregator carrying it, one site at a time. Have us do it. Everything above, filed for you, chased for you, and reported back. One flat fee. See the service → Every guide we publish is free and ungated. Browse all of them , see what we do and what it costs , or read why we built this company . Written by Drew Chapin , who ran all of this on his own name first. © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## Remove your record from DocketBird
URL: https://discoverability.co/guides/remove-your-record-from-docketbird/

Home / Guides / Court record removal: what actually comes down Guide Remove your record from DocketBird You've found your case on DocketBird, and you want it gone. DocketBird takes it down for free, and the takedown is immediate , but the request page isn't linked from anywhere on the site, and the identity check is a card whose last name matches a word in your case title. If you don't have a card, there's a notarized form you mail in instead. Steps verified live on September 8, 2026. What you actually get DocketBird hides the case from public view. It doesn't delete it. Its Terms say the materials stay "fully accessible to persons with DocketBird accounts, including without limitation patrons of public libraries that have DocketBird accounts," so anyone on a free trial still pulls the record. What you have to hand over A credit or debit card whose last name matches a word in the case title. That's the entire identity check, and there's no document to upload. DocketBird places a one dollar authorization and cancels it right away, then says to allow about five business days for it to drop off your statement. It's ID, not payment: the Terms say removals are always free. What stops it working The name match. Your card surname has to match a word in the case caption, so a maiden name, a name change since the filing, a case captioned under a company or a co-defendant, a misspelled caption, or a name that only appears inside a filed PDF all fail at the same screen. DocketBird's answer to "no card" is a notarized mail-in form , which asks you to describe your role in the case instead. Get your case ID first The removal page won't do anything without it. Search for your case on DocketBird, open it, and copy the ID out of the address bar. Federal IDs look like nyed-1:2018-cv-04339. State IDs look like c-lasu-2025-cv-25STCV14372. Don't hunt for a removal link in the menu or the help page, because there isn't one. DocketBird's help page is a chat widget with no removal instructions, and its knowledge base has no removal article at all. Paste the URL in the next step rather than searching for it. Open the removal page and confirm your email Go to https://www.docketbird.com/request_case_removal?case_id= and paste your case ID onto the end. The page renders "Request Removal of" and then your case title, which is how you know the ID is right. If it doesn't, go back and recopy the ID. Enter an email address you control. DocketBird sends a confirmation code to it, and that code gates every step after it , so keep the tab open while you check your inbox. There's no published turnaround for that email. Pick your option before you reach for a card The options screen comes next, ahead of any card. Option one is free removal from DocketBird with no Google removal. Option two is that same free removal plus a paid, expedited submission to Google. Take the free option and DocketBird's own page tells you your case "will remain on Google indefinitely, even after it is removed from DocketBird," while its success screen says the natural de-index can take several months. Believe the page you're transacting on. DocketBird doesn't publish what option two costs. The figure appears only inside the flow, so ignore any price you've read on another site and read the screen in front of you. Pass the card check The card screen comes after you've chosen, and in DocketBird's own words, "your last name, as it appears on your card, must match part of the case title." The one dollar authorization is placed and immediately canceled, and nothing about the removal itself costs money. If you have no card to put in, stop here and switch to the mail-in route below. DocketBird's page offers it directly: "You can still remove your case from DocketBird for free. You'll just need to validate your identity using our mail-in form." No card? Use the mail-in form Print the case removal request form and fill in your full name, email, telephone, street address, the case name and number, and a description of your role in the case. Enclose a printed copy of the DocketBird page you want removed, showing the full case name and case number. Page two is an acknowledgement form a notary public has to execute, so book the notary before you fill anything in , and take photo ID with you. Mail the packet to Mink LLC, Attention: Removals, 5940 S. Rainbow Blvd., Suite 400, PMB 66425, Las Vegas, Nevada 89118-2507. The form says to allow at least 6 to 8 weeks for processing, and this route doesn't include the Google removal service. Chase Google yourself, and use the guarantee if you paid If you took option two, DocketBird tells you to wait about five days, then search again. The submission covers only the docket sheet URL, so send any individual filings that rank separately, as a list of URLs, to help@docketbird.com. DocketBird states plainly that it won't check whether Google actually removed the case, and that periodically checking is your responsibility. Put a reminder in your calendar for a week out. If you paid and the case is still there, invoke the guarantee. The Terms say the case "will eventually be removed from Google's index" and promise "a full refund upon written request" if you're not satisfied after repeated efforts , so put that request in writing to help@docketbird.com. Check three things after it comes down First, look at the old URL. DocketBird's Privacy Policy says it "may display a notice that the case materials are hidden or unavailable because someone requested us to hide them or make them unavailable," so a marker can sit where your case was. Second, search your name again in about a week, and again a month later. On the free option, the de-index runs on a timeline DocketBird won't commit to. Third, if a lawyer hid the case through their own DocketBird account rather than through this request, ask them to redo it through the removal page. The Terms say an account-based removal expires if that account is canceled. What this doesn't fix This doesn't seal or expunge anything. DocketBird's Terms say it's under no obligation to grant a removal request in the first place, and there's no stated appeal. It's also one site. DocketBird's state court data is powered by UniCourt, a separate company with its own separate process , so a state case you clear here is still live over there. Mink LLC also reserves the right to make the same docket available through its other products. Sealing at the source court is the only durable fix. If you're pursuing that, keep a copy of the order and attach it to every request a site isn't obligated to grant. On this page Get your case ID first Open the removal page and confirm your email Pick your option before you reach for a card Pass the card check No card? Use the mail-in form Chase Google yourself, and use the guarantee if you paid Check three things after it comes down What this doesn't fix Written by Drew Chapin → Updated 2026-09-08 Rather not do this yourself? Court Record Removal → Related guides How to remove your record from UniCourt → How to remove your record from PacerMonitor → The same docket is sitting on other sites Send the DocketBird request yourself with the steps above, free. When the same docket also sits on UniCourt, CourtListener and Justia, the routes are not the same: UniCourt takes a free redaction request from a party, a guardian or an attorney, while CourtListener and Justia each de-index on a written request that lists the URLs, with no ID and no fee. Court Record Removal is $199 and we send those requests for you . PacerMonitor publishes no removal route at all, so there the lever is a court order sealing or restricting the case. Have us do it. Everything above, filed for you, chased for you, and reported back. One flat fee. See the service → Every guide we publish is free and ungated. Browse all of them , see what we do and what it costs , or read why we built this company . Written by Drew Chapin , who ran all of this on his own name first. © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## How to remove your record from PacerMonitor
URL: https://discoverability.co/guides/remove-your-record-from-pacermonitor/

Home / Guides / Court record removal: what actually comes down Guide How to remove your record from PacerMonitor You searched your name and a PacerMonitor page came up carrying your federal case. PacerMonitor publishes no removal form, no opt-out page and no removal policy , so there's one email address and nothing behind it obliging anyone to answer. Send it anyway, and start the court filing in the same week, because the certified court order is the only piece of this with any force behind it. What you get Nothing anyone has promised in writing. PacerMonitor publishes no removal policy at all , and its terms reserve a right instead of accepting a duty: "We reserve the right to remove any content for any reason at any time." A page can come down at their discretion, and that's the whole of it. Build your plan around the court order. What you have to send All of it, in one email. Every exact URL you want gone , the full case caption, the case number in court format, the district, and your relationship to the case as a party or as counsel with an appearance, with a certified copy of the court order sealing, restricting remote access to, vacating, dismissing with prejudice, or expunging your case attached. Certified means the clerk's stamped copy. Don't send a screenshot or a PACER printout. What stops it working No order. In the ordinary case the record is still validly public on PACER and no court has sealed it , so the email has nothing to point at. Expect silence, and go get the order. Copy every URL before you write anything Open every PacerMonitor page carrying your case, logged out, and copy the full address of each one. Send URLs, never a name. Paste them into the email as a plain list. While you're on the page, write down the caption, court, judge, case number, filing and termination dates, the docket text and the nature of suit. Copy the case number in court format, like 3:22-cv-01230, and the district exactly as they're written on the page. Get the certified order from the clerk Ask the clerk in the district that has your case for a certified copy of the order sealing, restricting remote access to, vacating, dismissing with prejudice, or expunging it. Certified is the clerk's own stamped copy , not a download of the docket entry and not a photo of one. If no such order exists yet, the next section is your step instead. An email with nothing attached is the version of this request that gets ignored. File the motion that limits remote access Ask the court to limit a nonparty's remote electronic access to your filing under Rule 5.2(e) , which a judge can order for good cause. Rule 5.2(d) is the stronger version, and it lets the court order a filing sealed without redaction. You file in the district that has the case, under its local rules, in front of the judge sitting on it, and the timeline is that district's motion practice rather than a support queue . Rule 5.2(h) says you waive the Rule 5.2(a) protection for your own information by filing it unredacted and not under seal, and Rule 5.2(c) reaches only Social Security and immigration cases. Send the certified order to PacerMonitor separately once you have it , and to every other site holding the docket. Send one email to support@pacermonitor.com support@pacermonitor.com is the only email published anywhere on PacerMonitor's public site. Don't go hunting for a removal form or a contact page, because there isn't one. The email carries every exact URL, the full case caption, the case number in court format, the district, and your relationship to the case as a party or as counsel with an appearance, with the certified order attached. Nothing else. Don't email the Fitch Group , whatever the footer on your case page points at. And if anyone comes back asking for a government ID, no documented step requires one, so redact everything but your name and photo . PacerMonitor publishes no turnaround time and no acknowledgment commitment , so treat this email as the cheap parallel step, never the plan. Send it, then keep the court filing moving in the same week. The routes to skip Skip the CCPA deletion demand. California's privacy law excludes anything lawfully made available from federal, state or local government records, and a federal docket is the textbook case. California's DROP deletion mechanism only binds registered data brokers, and PacerMonitor isn't a registered California data broker . Skip FCRA. 15 U.S.C. 1681a ties a consumer reporting agency to furnishing consumer reports for credit, insurance and employment, and PacerMonitor sells litigation monitoring to law firms and financial institutions. Skip copyright too , because their terms designate no DMCA agent and offer only an informal contact. Skip Google's removal form. Its personal information removal policy covers addresses, phone numbers, government IDs, financial accounts and medical records, and a court record isn't any of those. Read section 21 of their terms before you threaten to sue. It compels binding AAA arbitration and waives your right to sue. What this doesn't fix Getting the page down does nothing to the case. It doesn't seal, expunge, vacate or alter the court's own record , and it never touches PACER. And it only moves one URL. Every other site carrying the same docket takes its own separate request, in its own format. If the record underneath is still open, plan on suppression rather than removal , which means ranking pages you own above the docket page. On this page Copy every URL before you write anything Get the certified order from the clerk File the motion that limits remote access Send one email to support@pacermonitor.com The routes to skip What this doesn't fix Written by Drew Chapin → Updated 2026-09-08 Rather not do this yourself? Court Record Removal → Related guides How to remove your record from CourtListener → How to remove court records from Google → The same docket sits on other sites Send the PacerMonitor email yourself, it costs nothing. When the same docket is also on CourtListener, UniCourt, Trellis and Justia, Court Record Removal is $199, one time , and we inventory every copy of your case and work every aggregator we can reach so you're not sending the same email site by site. Have us do it. Everything above, filed for you, chased for you, and reported back. One flat fee. See the service → Every guide we publish is free and ungated. Browse all of them , see what we do and what it costs , or read why we built this company . Written by Drew Chapin , who ran all of this on his own name first. © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## Reputation management after an arrest
URL: https://discoverability.co/guides/reputation-management-after-an-arrest/

Home / Guides / Court record removal: what actually comes down Guide Reputation management after an arrest You searched your name and a mugshot or a docket you've never seen is sitting on page one. Start at the clerk of courts , because every site, screener and form below asks for the same certified paperwork. Then work outward in this order: the publisher, your state's statute, Google, each background screener, and the copies the government still holds. Send the order separately to every site holding a copy. What you actually get A publisher deletes the page only on an expungement, seal, no information, restriction, identity theft or death. Send Mugshots.com a dismissal or an acquittal instead and it routes you to a second address and posts the disposition on every page about your arrest, which its own policy calls not a removal . Google's route stops the page showing on your name and leaves the page live . What you have to send A court order signed by a judge, sealed by the court, and legible. Mugshots.com discards non-legible documents and sends no notification, so a phone photo of a docket screen is indistinguishable from being ignored. Order three certified copies while you're at the clerk's counter, and put the site's own record ID for your arrest in the email. What stops it working A conviction that still stands fails every door in this guide. Georgia's statutory triggers, Mugshots.com's removal list and the Texas publishing ban all key on a dismissal, an acquittal, a diversion completion or a sealing order. If that's your situation, go get the conviction sealed or expunged first , because nothing downstream fires without that order. Get the certified paperwork before you email anybody Go to the clerk of courts in the county where you were arrested and ask, by docket number, for a certified copy of the disposition : dismissal, nolle prosequi, acquittal, or completion of a diversionary program. Write down the docket number, the county, the court and the arrest date while you're at the counter, because every form after this asks for all four . If a judge has already signed an expungement, sealing, limited-access or nondisclosure order, get a certified copy of that too, showing the case caption and the docket number. That order, not the disposition, is what makes a publisher delete. If nobody has entered one, file the petition: in Pennsylvania the forms are the court system's own, Petition for Expungement under Pa.R.Crim.P. 490 for summary offenses and 790 for court cases, plus Petition for Limited Access under 791, all on the Pennsylvania courts forms page . Check whether Pennsylvania already sealed it for you before you file, and check your own state's rules, which will be different . Clean Slate moves any charge that ended in something other than a conviction, along with second- and third-degree misdemeanors after seven conviction-free years, qualifying offenses after ten and summary convictions after five, once restitution is paid. Figure on one to three months once you're eligible. Send the order to the site that's publishing it Mail or email the order to each site holding a copy, one site at a time. Mugshots.com is the documented route: its record maintenance page says the site does not charge to remove or update an arrest record, and that it removes only for expungement, seal, no information, restriction, identity theft or death. Email the court documentation to the address on that page with your Mugshots.com ID in the message , and scan it clean, because non-legible documents are discarded and no notification is provided. The site says the process can take up to ten business days and guarantees nothing about timing, so put a follow-up date in your calendar instead of waiting on an answer that may never arrive. A dismissal, acquittal, nolle prosequi, exoneration or pardon routes to a second address there and buys you an annotation rather than a removal , with the disposition displayed on every page about your arrest. If that's all you're holding, go back to the petition in the first step. And if any site you write to demands money, screenshot the demand before you answer it , because that screenshot is what Google's form asks for later. Use your state's statute to put a clock on it Serve the order yourself, in writing, on the publisher. In Georgia, O.C.G.A. section 10-1-393.5 requires the operator to take the booking photograph down without fee or compensation, within thirty days of a written request sent by certified mail with return receipt requested or by statutory overnight delivery to the registered agent or principal place of business. Include your name, date of birth, date of arrest and the arresting agency. Texas only reaches a site that charges 150 dollars or more to remove, or any fee at all to correct or modify . Against a free-removal aggregator, chapter 109 does not apply, and Georgia's statute or the court order is your only lever. Where it does apply, Texas Business and Commerce Code section 109.004 makes the site verify the disputed information with the law enforcement agency at no cost, finish its investigation no later than the 45th business day after it receives notice of the dispute, and give written results within five business days of finishing, and it bars any fee to remove or correct. Section 109.005 turns publishing after notice of an expunction or nondisclosure order into a claim worth up to 500 dollars per violation plus 500 dollars for each continuing day, with court costs and attorney's fees. California Civil Code section 1798.91.1 is narrower and blunter: it's unlawful to solicit, require or accept payment to remove, correct or refrain from publishing a booking photograph, and the person in the photo can sue for the greater of 1,000 dollars per violation or actual damages , plus costs and fees. Don't pay a removal fee anywhere. Paying deletes the evidence Google's form asks for in the next step. File with Google only if the site charged you Google's personal-content categories are a closed list, and the only one that reaches an arrest record is content on sites with exploitative removal practices . All three conditions on Google's policy page have to be true: you're the subject of the content, the site isn't a business review site, and the site requires payment to have the content removed . File the URLs through the content removal form , one per line, with your screenshots of the payment demand and a written explanation of how the site is exploitative. Don't file this against a site that removes for free. Mugshots.com states in writing that it does not accept payment for removal, so it fails that third condition and this door stays shut on it. Don't file an arrest URL through Results about you either, which covers phone numbers, home addresses, email addresses, Social Security numbers, passport numbers and driver's license numbers. Where a free-removal aggregator is holding the copy, the paperwork in the first three steps is the whole route . Google also won't remove a result that sits in the public record on a government or official site, so leave the sheriff's booking page and the clerk's docket out of the request. Google publishes no turnaround time for a removal decision , so anyone quoting you one is guessing. When a page does come down, flush the stale listing with Google's Refresh Outdated Content tool, which needs a Google login and does nothing while the page is still live. And a granted removal is Google only: Bing, DuckDuckGo and the site itself keep serving the page. Dispute every background screener, one at a time No court order reaches a screening company's private copy, so dispute each company separately, free of charge . Send the report with the disputed entry identified and the certified disposition attached. The CFPB's list of consumer reporting companies is your mailing list. 15 U.S.C. section 1681i gives the agency thirty days to run a reasonable reinvestigation, requires it to promptly delete or modify anything inaccurate or unverifiable, and requires written results within five business days of finishing. Section 1681c(a)(2) keeps an arrest off a report once it's more than seven years old or the governing statute of limitations has run, whichever is longer. Section 1681c(b)(3) switches those limits off for a job paying, or reasonably expected to pay, 75,000 dollars a year or more, so don't lean on the seven years for a senior role. If you're in Pennsylvania, cite section 9122.5(a.1) in the dispute. Added by Act 36 of 2023, it bars anyone from using an expunged or limited-access record for employment, housing or school matriculation , and section 9183 backs it with damages of not less than 100 dollars per violation plus costs and attorney's fees. We haven't seen it tested against an out-of-state screening company, so treat it as a right on the books rather than a button you press. Clear the copies the government still holds See what your state repository has on you. In Pennsylvania that's form SP 4-170 , mailed to the State Police Central Repository with a nonrefundable certified check or money order, and the form warns a response may take three months or longer . Start it the week you start everything else, not after a job offer is on the table. In California, ask the police department to pull a nonviolent arrestee's booking photograph off social media. Penal Code section 13665 gives them fourteen days from the request and applies retroactively, but it doesn't reach the department's own website, so the jail roster stays up . Write the agency that contributed the entry, not the FBI. Under 28 CFR 16.34 you apply directly to that agency, or you mail the challenge to FBI, Criminal Justice Information Services Division, ATTN: SCU, Mod. D-2, 1000 Custer Hollow Road, Clarksburg, WV 26306. The FBI forwards it to the contributing agency either way and changes its record only on official word back. Where this stops, and what it costs you to run yourself Accurate news coverage has no legal route in the United States, so the only door at a newspaper is that paper's own policy . Per the Boston Globe's Fresh Start FAQ , its committee meets monthly and prioritizes older stories, is unlikely to act on the most serious crimes, and holds public figures and people in positions of public trust to a higher standard. Send yours through the Fresh Start appeal page . None of this seals or expunges the court's own record. Don't plan on suing an offshore operator either, since a statutory damages claim needs a defendant somebody can serve and collect against: use the statute as leverage inside the letter , and treat the payout as a bonus you will probably never collect. You can run every step above yourself. What it costs is calendar and paperwork : a certified copy per court, a separate email or certified letter per publisher, a separate dispute per screener, one line per URL at Google, and a nonrefundable fee for the state repository check. Then thirty days on a screener dispute before anybody owes you an answer, and 45 business days on a Texas dispute only where that chapter reaches the site. On this page Get the certified paperwork before you email anybody Send the order to the site that's publishing it Use your state's statute to put a clock on it File with Google only if the site charged you Dispute every background screener, one at a time Clear the copies the government still holds Where this stops, and what it costs you to run yourself Written by Drew Chapin → Updated 2026-09-08 Rather not do this yourself? Court Record Removal → Related guides How to remove arrest records from Google → Why your expunged record is still showing online → How to use Google's removal tools on a court record → One order, and then every copy of it Once you're holding the order, what's left is the mailing: every site carrying your arrest, chased one at a time. Court Record Removal is $199 , one time, filed and chased for you, plus twelve months of re-submission when a copy comes back. Have us do it. Everything above, filed for you, chased for you, and reported back. One flat fee. See the service → Every guide we publish is free and ungated. Browse all of them , see what we do and what it costs , or read why we built this company . Written by Drew Chapin , who ran all of this on his own name first. © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## What reputation management costs, and why nobody else will tell you
URL: https://discoverability.co/guides/reputation-management-cost/

Home / Guides / Reputation management: four problems on one page Record types What reputation management costs, and why nobody else will tell you Our standard personal reputation management package is $2,488, one time . That's the number, published, with nothing to fill in first. Nobody else in this category publishes one: we checked seven of the biggest names and not one prints a dollar figure anywhere, six of the seven 404 on their own pricing page, and every route to a price runs through a form or a phone call. Here's how to get a real number today. What you get: a number, right now $2,488, one time, for the standard personal package. Not monthly, not a retainer, nothing bolted on later. It covers one person's own search results and the scope is written down beside the figure, so you can decide before you speak to anybody. It isn't a ceiling. A bigger situation gets quoted on its own and you see that number before any work starts. What it costs you elsewhere: your phone number Full Name, Email Address and Phone Number are all required fields on NetReputation's form, and the only optional one is a dropdown asking what best describes your situation. Guaranteed Removals wants the same three plus a description of your case, and won't submit until you tick their agreement box. You hand those over first and the number comes back afterward, from a specialist, on their clock. What stops it working: comparing quotes that measure different work A per-link fee and a monthly fee are not the same number and can't be lined up side by side. Guaranteed Removals bills per link, only after that link is removed and verified. The suppression firms sell a custom scope that becomes a recurring charge. If you don't pin down which one you're being quoted, you'll pick the smaller-sounding figure and sign up for the larger bill . Take our number first, then price the rest The standard personal reputation management package is $2,488, one time. It's printed on the Personal Reputation Management page with the scope sitting right next to it, so you can read what's included and walk away without talking to anyone. Write the figure down and use it as your control number while you call around, because it's the only one you'll get without a conversation. It's the price of one defined package, not a quote for every situation. The package is one person's own search results. Anything past what it covers, a bigger job, gets quoted on its own and you see that number before the work starts . Companies are a different piece of work, so we scope those on what the situation actually needs and get to a number quickly. Skip the pricing pages, most of them don't exist Don't spend your afternoon hunting for a rate card. Typing /pricing after the domain is the first thing everyone tries, and at ReputationDefender and NetReputation it returns a 404, because neither one has a pricing page. The same URL 404s at BrandYourself , WebiMax , InternetReputation and Reputation Rhino : not one of them prints a dollar figure on the pages that sell the service. The one firm that does have a page called Pricing puts no number on it. Guaranteed Removals' pricing page opens with "Pricing tailored to your case" and then lists four factors in place of a rate: how many links, where the content lives, how urgent the timeline is, and how complex the removal is. That is the category's published answer, in full. BrandYourself says why in its own words: "The cost can vary depending on the company, the deliverables and the difficulty of the client's search results." That's an honest description of custom scoping, and it's worth knowing that hidden pricing here isn't a sign of anything shady . It means the number comes out of a sales conversation, so if you're going to shop the category, plan for the conversation. What a free quote costs you Every button is worded like information and none of them puts a price on your screen. "Start a free scan", "Get a FREE Proposal" and "Schedule a Free Consultation" all open a form; "Talk to an Expert" is a phone number. Assume that clicking any of them starts a sales process, not a research task, and decide whether you want that before you click. NetReputation's form shows exactly what the trade is. Full Name, Email Address and Phone Number each carry the required asterisk , the dropdown "What best describes your situation?" is the only field you can skip, and the fine print reads "By submitting you agree to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy". The button says "Get My Free Analysis" and the promise under it is "A specialist will contact you within 1 business hour". Guaranteed Removals runs the same trade with a checkbox added : name, phone, email and a few details about your case, and the form refuses to send until you agree to their privacy policy and terms. Their page says a specialist responds typically within one business day. Your phone number is the price of the quote , at NetReputation, Guaranteed Removals and InternetReputation alike, and you can't take it back once you've paid it. Have three things ready before any call Search your own name in quotes and copy the URLs. Open a private browser window, run your name, and list every result you want gone or pushed down, with the full address of each one. That list is what a quote is actually priced against. Anyone who gives you a number without looking at it is guessing, and the guess gets revised upward once somebody does look. Say up front whether this is a person or a company. They are separately scoped and separately priced everywhere, including here, and a personal package number quoted at a business is worthless to both sides. Get that settled in the first minute of the call instead of the last. Decide whether you want the page gone or pushed down, because those are two different products. Removal means the host takes the page off the internet, and it's billed per link at the firms that do it. Suppression means the page stays up and stops ranking on your name, which is ongoing work sold as a scope. Ask which one you're being quoted for before you compare anybody's figure to anybody else's. The two ways you'll be billed Pay on success, per link. Guaranteed Removals states it plainly: "No upfront fees. No retainers. You're only billed after the link is removed and verified gone." If that's the shape you're offered, the questions that matter are what the per-link price is, what counts as removed, and what happens to the ones that don't come down . Get all three answered in the same email as the quote. A custom scope that turns into a recurring charge. That's the rest of the category. ReputationDefender's Compare all solutions page lists three tiers, Content Suppression, Digital Security and Corporate Privacy, with no cost against any of them, so the tier names are the only thing published anywhere . On the call, ask whether the figure is one time or per month, how many months it runs, and what happens to your results when you stop paying. Ours is the first shape with no per-link math : one flat fee, agreed before anything begins, for a defined package. $2,488, one time. If your situation needs work beyond the package, you get a real quote for that work and you see it before you pay it. Read the quote before you pay Make the quote name the URLs. A quote that says "reputation management" and a price is not a scope, it's a subscription with a headline. Ask for the specific addresses being worked on, listed out, and ask what the fee covers when a result you care about isn't on that list . Pin the term in writing. One time or recurring, how long, what the cancellation is, and whether anything auto-renews. A firm that won't put the cadence in an email before you sign is telling you something, and "custom" is not an answer to "how many months" . Ask what happens if it doesn't work. Guaranteed Removals publishes a lifetime guarantee on removals it completes. Most firms publish nothing at all on this. Whatever you're told on the call, ask for it in writing , because a verbal guarantee attached to a verbal price is not something you can hold anybody to later. What no price in this category buys No fee anywhere seals or expunges a record. Paying a reputation firm doesn't change a court's own file, doesn't force a publisher to retract, and doesn't delete anything from a government database. Suppression changes what ranks on your name. It doesn't edit the underlying record , and any quote implying otherwise is selling you something that isn't for sale. And nobody in this category can sell you a date. Not one of the seven firms publishes a delivery timeline next to a price, so the only clock any of them publishes is how fast someone gets back to you: one business hour at NetReputation, one business day at Guaranteed Removals. Treat a promised results date as a sales line unless it's written into the agreement you sign. On this page Take our number first, then price the rest Skip the pricing pages, most of them don't exist What a free quote costs you Have three things ready before any call The two ways you'll be billed Read the quote before you pay What no price in this category buys Written by Drew Chapin → Updated 2026-09-08 Rather not do this yourself? Personal Reputation Management → Related guides Reputation management after an arrest → How to use Google's removal tools on a court record → You already have our number You can price this whole category yourself, and it'll cost you your phone number and a week of calls to land back at "it depends." Personal Reputation Management is $2,488, one time , for one person's own search results, with the scope agreed before you pay anything. If your situation is bigger than the package, or you're a company, we scope it and hand you a real number before any work starts. Have us do it. Everything above, filed for you, chased for you, and reported back. One flat fee. See the service → Every guide we publish is free and ungated. Browse all of them , see what we do and what it costs , or read why we built this company . Written by Drew Chapin , who ran all of this on his own name first. © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## Reputation management: four problems on one page
URL: https://discoverability.co/guides/reputation/

Home / Guides Guide hub Reputation management: four problems on one page You searched your name and found a broker listing, a news story nobody is taking down, an old job title Google still shows, and nothing you own. That's four separate problems on one page of results , and each one answers to a different request. Most people work whichever one scared them first, which is why the page never really changes. Here's how to sort them, and the order that makes the work hold. What this whole category can and can't do Some of it comes down, most of it gets outranked, and none of it gets erased. A granted Google request pulls one URL out of one search engine while the page stays live at the same address and keeps ranking elsewhere. Deletion belongs to the site owner and nobody else. A court's own file, a newspaper's archive and a government database sit outside every request in this category , at any price, which is why the work splits in two: removing what will move, and outranking what won't. What it costs you in time Almost every request here is free, and the clocks belong to other people. Google publishes no decision turnaround at all. California's DROP can take up to 90 days to show a status. PACER mails an activation code in 7 to 10 business days if you don't hand over a card, and LexisNexis posts you a letter before you can open your own report. Budget several evenings for the searching and the list , then months of checking back, because the follow-up is what decides whether any of it held. The mistake that makes people think it failed Working one pile and calling it the whole job. People file every removal they can, watch three listings disappear, search again and find the page looks the same or worse, because a removal creates a vacancy and the next result moves up into it . Removals shrink the bad pile. Only pages you own change what sits at the top. Run the two together , or you'll spend a month proving the removals worked and still not like what a recruiter sees. Sort the first page into four piles before you file anything Open a private window, sign out, and search your full name in quotes. Then your name plus your city, your name plus your employer, and your name with a middle initial, several results pages deep on each one. Copy the exact address out of the browser bar for every hit and screenshot it while it's up. You're reading what a stranger sees, and that's the only version of your name that matters. Now label every URL with one of four words. Removable is a broker listing, an aggregator's copy of a court case, a pay-to-delete site, or anything carrying your address, phone number or email. Unremovable is a news story, a court docket, a government portal or a university page. Stale is a page that already changed or came down while Google still shows the old text. Missing is the pages that should rank on your name and don't exist yet. Four piles, four different people who decide the outcome : a site owner, a search engine, a court or a publisher, and you. The sort takes an hour and it's the step that saves the money, because nearly every wasted request in this category is a request filed at the wrong pile. Removable: the site owner first, then Google Only the site owner deletes anything. Google says so in its own words on its removal options page: "While we can prevent content from appearing in our search results, we can't remove it from websites that host it." So the first email on every removable URL goes to the site, and the Google request goes second , once you know whether the page is coming down or staying up. Switch on Google's Results about you before you touch anything else, and feed it every version of your name: nickname, maiden name, every address, phone number and email an old listing might carry. It watches while you work the rest of the list and matches land in the To review tab within a few hours. It removes nothing on its own , and there's no signed-out version, so you need a Google account first. Everything the monitor misses goes through Google's content removal form , one URL per line. Pick the exploitative removal practices branch when the site is demanding money , because that's the only route that asks the question your case rests on, and never pay the site : the demand is your evidence, so screenshot it before you do anything. California residents get one real shortcut, DROP , where a single request reaches over 600 registered data brokers. Everywhere else, each broker is its own opt-out. Unremovable: read the refusal once and stop refiling Google won't act on results from educational or government institutions, newspapers, or business websites , and its help page is blunt about what you'll see on screen: on a result like that, there's no Remove result option at all. That isn't the hard case, it's the ordinary one, and resubmitting the same claim changes nothing . The routes that do exist on this pile are slow and none of them is a search engine. A publisher can update or unpublish its own story. A court order goes to Google's legal request form and has to be won in a real court first. Europe's Right to be Forgotten only delists for queries related to your name, in countries applying European data protection law, and there's no US equivalent , so a searcher here still sees the result. Mark this pile closed on the same day you sort it. An unremovable page is a ranking problem, not a removal problem , and what it needs is the fourth pile rather than another form. Missing: the pile that decides where the unremovable ones sit A removal creates a vacancy, and something always fills it. Pull three broker listings off the first page and the next three results move up, which is why people finish a week of filing and feel like the page got worse. What lands in the vacancy is decided entirely by what you own. So build this pile alongside the removals instead of after them. Pages you control and publish under your exact name are what a search on your name should be returning: your own site, an accurate profile on the platforms that already rank, a bio that says what you do now. Use the name in the same form everywhere , because a variant spelling is a page that never joins the set. Then go back to the search terms you wrote down during the sort. List the exact queries you're actually worried about , name plus city, name plus employer, name plus the story, and check what you own against each one. A page that answers none of those queries isn't in this pile , it's just a page you like. Stale: that's a re-crawl, not a removal When a site has already deleted or edited a page and Google still shows the old title and text, use Refresh outdated content , the Page tab for a URL and the Image tab for a photo. It only re-crawls, it removes nothing , and sending it a live, unchanged page spends the request and changes nothing . A rejection here is telling you the source never actually changed. The stale pile runs past the search results. Fix your LinkedIn visibility settings before you rewrite a line of the profile , because the public version is the one search engines index. And your background file is stale until you've read it : order your LexisNexis Consumer Disclosure Report, then check The Work Number, which also shows the names of every verifier that requested your information in the last 24 months. An error in a file is a dispute, not a removal. You go back to the company that furnished the information, which is why you ask for the sources and the recipient list in the same request rather than just the data. That disclosure is free once every twelve months and the specialty bureaus owe it inside fifteen days, so start it early instead of in the week a check is already running. The order, and what inverting it costs you Run it in this order: monitor on, records ordered, source deletions, then Google, then the refresh, and build the whole way through . Records go early because they run on somebody else's clock. PACER mails an activation code in 7 to 10 business days if you skip the credit card, and LexisNexis sends a letter by U.S. Mail before you can read your own report. Two inversions cost more than every other mistake combined. Filing at Google before the source changed earns a denial on a page you could have had deleted outright, and removing before you've built anything hands the top of your name to whatever was sitting in fourth place. Do the source work first, and start the pages on day one. One more, and it's about your phone number. Don't price this category before you've sorted your piles , because every free scan and free proposal in it is a form wanting your name, email and phone before a number comes back. You can't take a phone number back , and a quote priced against a list you haven't made yet gets revised upward the moment somebody looks at it. What none of this reaches No fee anywhere seals or expunges a record. Nothing you file changes a court's own file, forces a publisher to retract, or deletes a line from a government database. Suppression changes what ranks on your name and it doesn't edit the underlying record , so anyone implying otherwise is selling you something that isn't for sale. Nobody publishes a decision date, Google included. A match notification arrives within a few hours, an approved result can take a few more hours to leave Search, and past that there's no published turnaround on any of these routes. Treat a promised results date as a sales line unless it's written into the agreement you sign. And this is a standing job rather than a project. Brokers repost, people-search sites spin up a new URL for the same profile, and a screener assembles a fresh report every time somebody orders one. Put a date in the calendar, run the identical searches, and keep in mind that an empty To review tab looks exactly like being clean . On this page Sort the first page into four piles before you file anything Removable: the site owner first, then Google Unremovable: read the refusal once and stop refiling Missing: the pile that decides where the unremovable ones sit Stale: that's a re-crawl, not a removal The order, and what inverting it costs you What none of this reaches Written by Drew Chapin → Updated 2026-09-08 Rather not do this yourself? Personal Reputation Management → Related guides How to run opposition research on yourself → How to remove your name from Google search results → What reputation management costs, and why nobody else will tell you → The whole page, in one order. Sorting your own first page is free and you can do it tonight, and every guide under this page is written so you can file the rest yourself. When the piles come back and the results on top are the ones nobody removes, our Personal Reputation Management package is $2,488, one time : a written result-by-result assessment, the removals filed and chased, accurate pages built and ranked against whatever stays, and monitoring included indefinitely so you're not the one checking. Have us do it. Everything above, filed for you, chased for you, and reported back. One flat fee. See the service → Every guide we publish is free and ungated. Browse all of them , see what we do and what it costs , or read why we built this company . Written by Drew Chapin , who ran all of this on his own name first. © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## Search and AI visibility: what you actually control
URL: https://discoverability.co/guides/search-and-ai/

Home / Guides Guide hub Search and AI visibility: what you actually control You searched your name in Google, then asked ChatGPT the same question and got a different answer citing somebody else. Ranking in a list of links and being quoted in a generated answer are two separate jobs , decided by different crawlers and diagnosed in different places. Nothing on the AI side takes a submission, so the work is access first, then a page worth quoting. Here's the order. What all of this buys you Eligibility, never placement. You can make Google, Bing, Brave, ChatGPT, Perplexity and Claude able to reach, index and quote your pages, and that is the entire outcome on offer. Google says on its own AI features page that indexing and serving aren't guaranteed even when you meet every requirement, and OpenAI's complete published statement on ranking ends with placement is not guaranteed . Nobody publishes how they choose among the pages that already qualify. What it costs you to do alone An afternoon to open every door, and then it never quite ends. Bing's setup is about twenty minutes. The ChatGPT fix is two lines in robots.txt and about 24 hours before you judge it. Brave takes one URL at a time, with no account and no ticket number. The recurring cost is the measuring: fifteen questions a buyer would actually type, run in each engine on the same day every month , because not one of them reports a citation to you. The mistake that makes people quit Your robots.txt says allow and your CDN says 403. A bot rule at Cloudflare or your host turns the crawler away before robots.txt is ever read, nothing announces it, and no console anywhere shows you. People run the whole checklist, stay uncited for months, and decide the category is a scam. Your own access logs are the only proof , and they settle it in ten minutes. There is no submission form, for any of them Read this before you buy anything, because it disqualifies most of what gets sold in this category. Google states there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode , and closes the door on the file rituals by name: you don't need to create new machine readable files, AI text files, or markup to appear in these features. An llms.txt is not the price of admission. The rest are the same answer in different words. ChatGPT publishes no submission tool and no ranking checklist. Perplexity publishes no way to add, suppress or remove a citation. Brave's only self-serve tool re-fetches one URL at a time , with no account, no bulk upload and no confirmation. Bing is the one exception and it is twenty minutes of free setup, not a program you fund. So there's nothing to apply for, which means anyone selling you AI search submission or ChatGPT ranking factors invented the product . What each engine does publish is the name of the crawler that decides whether you're eligible to be quoted at all, and that name is the whole documented surface. Every guide beneath this page is those same checks run against a different company's bot. Ranking and being cited are different jobs Ranking is a position among links, so you're trying to move up a list. Citation is binary: the assistant either names you as a source or it doesn't. A page can sit fifth on Google and still be the page ChatGPT quotes, and it can sit first and never get quoted once. Working on one does not automatically deliver the other. They also fail differently, which is why people miss the second one entirely. A ranking problem is visible , because Search Console gives you impressions, position and clicks. A citation problem is invisible by design : OpenAI, Perplexity and Anthropic publish no publisher analytics of any kind, and Google folds its AI surfaces into ordinary Performance reporting with no AI Overviews row and no AI Mode filter. Most sites have never checked either one. They've never read their own robots.txt against the current bot names, and they've never once run the questions their customers actually ask through an assistant to see whose page gets named instead. Both of those are an afternoon, and doing them in that order is the difference between fixing this and guessing at it. Confirm you're indexed, then get the bot names right Google's AI surfaces run on ordinary Google Search eligibility and nothing else, so if the URL isn't indexed, nothing further down this page matters . Run URL Inspection in Search Console on the exact address you want cited. Copilot answers off the Bing index, so ask the same first question in Bing Webmaster Tools . ChatGPT, Perplexity and Claude publish no index checker at all, which is why the crawler check below is the only diagnostic you get on those three. Then open your own robots.txt and read every Disallow line against the names that actually govern citation: OAI-SearchBot for ChatGPT, PerplexityBot for Perplexity and Claude-SearchBot for Claude , alongside Googlebot and Bingbot. The training crawlers are separate bots , GPTBot and ClaudeBot, and blocking those costs you nothing in search. Google-Extended governs neither: blocking it won't remove you from AI Overviews and allowing it won't get you in. Brave is its own case and people assume it isn't. Brave runs its own index and serves results solely from it , so your Google position counts for nothing there and a removal you won at Google removed nothing from Brave. Its crawler doesn't advertise a differentiated user agent, which has one useful consequence: the Googlebot rule in your robots.txt is the Brave rule , and there's no Brave line to add. The block is almost never in the robots file This is the step that eats months. Your file can say allow while Cloudflare, Akamai or your host's bot management hands the crawler a 403 or a challenge page , and none of that is visible from outside. Google puts it in its own best-practice list: make sure crawling is allowed in robots.txt, and by any CDN or hosting infrastructure. Perplexity goes further and asks you to permit its published IP ranges as well. Pull your server and CDN logs and search the user agent field for each bot name. A bot that shows up and gets a 403 or a challenge page is being turned away at the edge, which is a firewall rule and has nothing to do with your content. A bot that never appears hasn't reached you. Curling your own page with the bot's user agent proves less than it looks , because the request comes from your address rather than the crawler's, so a firewall filtering by IP waves you through and blocks the bot anyway. Read the page for snippet directives while you're in there, because they suppress citation without touching your rankings. nosnippet removes your content as a direct input to AI Overviews and AI Mode , max-snippet set to 0 does the same thing, data-nosnippet can be sitting around one paragraph inside a template, and all of it can arrive as an X-Robots-Tag header where nobody thinks to look. For Copilot the equivalent is NOARCHIVE , which despite the name is not a cache setting and removes the link entirely. Make the page legible, then make it worth quoting Access makes you eligible. What gets you quoted is a page that answers the question in text a machine can lift. Structured data is how a model resolves who you are: Organization markup on the homepage carrying an @id, and sameAs pointing at your LinkedIn company page, your Wikidata item and anywhere else your name is already published. That's what collapses five loose references into one entity. Schema has never been a ranking factor and nobody should sell it to you as one. It buys eligibility and legibility, not position. Two types stopped paying in August 2023 , when Google cut FAQ rich results back to government and health sites and retired HowTo entirely. And the common failure isn't a missing tag: it's a plugin writing one Organization block while your theme writes a second one with a different name and logo, which Google resolves by trusting neither. Then the ordinary part, which Google lists as ordinary work rather than an AI requirement: internal links so your content is findable, a good page experience, important content available in textual form, and structured data that matches the visible text . Correct markup over a thin page describes a thin page accurately, and that is all it does. Write the answer first, mark it up second. Measure it by hand, because nobody reports it There's no Search Console for AI citation. Google includes its AI surfaces in overall search traffic with no breakout, so anyone quoting you an AI Overviews click-through rate out of Search Console is reading a number that doesn't exist there. Bing gives you search impressions and clicks with no Copilot citation breakout, and OpenAI, Perplexity and Anthropic publish nothing to publishers at all. You get two real instruments and both are worth wiring up before you change anything. ChatGPT appends utm_source=chatgpt.com to referral URLs , so build a GA4 segment on that source today and treat the number as a floor, since a citation that gets read and not clicked never reaches you. Bing's AI Performance report counts citations from your site shown as sources in AI answers , which is worth opening monthly and not worth tuning for, because no control in that tool moves it. Everything else is a hand-run test, and it only works if you keep it identical. Write down fifteen questions a buyer would actually type, run every one in each engine on the same day each month, and record whether you were named and which page got cited instead of yours. Never change the list. A question list that moves gives you a story instead of a measurement. What none of this moves Eligibility is a precondition, not a result. Pass every check on this page and an engine can still name your competitor, and there's nowhere to appeal it: none of these assistants offers a form, a support queue or an escalation path for being included in an answer, and not one of them documents how it picks among the pages that already qualify. Price anybody selling a guaranteed AI citation accordingly. All of it also assumes pages you control. If the answer you want changed is about you personally and it's citing sites you don't own, none of these checks reach it. What moves that is the cited page itself getting corrected, delisted or removed at the publisher, and then publishing accurate material for a model to read instead. That's different work, with different rules and a different timeline. And nothing transfers between engines. A delisting you won at Google removed nothing from Brave , which runs a separate index, takes a separate email, and says a delisting it agrees to can take up to 30 days. We'll tell you which of those situations you're actually in before you pay, because it changes what you should buy. On this page There is no submission form, for any of them Ranking and being cited are different jobs Confirm you're indexed, then get the bot names right The block is almost never in the robots file Make the page legible, then make it worth quoting Measure it by hand, because nobody reports it What none of this moves Written by Drew Chapin → Updated 2026-09-08 Rather not do this yourself? SEO and AI Optimization → Related guides How to appear in AI search results: there's nothing to submit → How to get cited by ChatGPT, and what you actually control → Schema markup, and what it actually buys you → Access is free. Being the answer isn't. Everything above you can run yourself this week, and you should, because none of it costs money. What takes somebody's ongoing attention is keeping five crawlers reaching a site that changes every week, reading the logs when one of them stops, and writing pages good enough that an assistant quotes them instead of your competitor. That's what our SEO and AI Optimization service does: we record what Google, Bing, Brave and the assistants say about you today, fix the site and the sources behind them, then ask the same questions again so you can see what moved. It's quoted against your situation rather than sold at a list price. Have us do it. Everything above, filed for you, chased for you, and reported back. One flat fee. See the service → Every guide we publish is free and ungated. Browse all of them , see what we do and what it costs , or read why we built this company . Written by Drew Chapin , who ran all of this on his own name first. © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## How to run opposition research on yourself
URL: https://discoverability.co/guides/self-opposition-research-checklist/

Home / Guides / Reputation management: four problems on one page Record types How to run opposition research on yourself Before you hire anyone to fix your search results, pull the four records yourself. What Google shows, what data brokers sell, what's in your background-check file , and what's sitting in federal court. Search results are the easy layer. The background file is the one that costs people jobs, it's free once every twelve months , and it names everyone who's pulled you. Work them in order: each layer hands you the next thing to check. What you actually end up holding A list, not a cleanup. You finish with four things: the URLs actually ranking on your name, your LexisNexis Consumer Disclosure Report , your federal court record, and the names of everyone who obtained a report on you , going back two years for employment purposes. None of it removes anything. It tells you what a screener, a landlord or a hiring manager already sees, which is what you were about to pay somebody to guess at. What it costs, and what you hand over Money: close to nothing. PACER registration is free, records run 10 cents a page capped at 3 dollars a document, and you're only billed if you pass 30 dollars in a quarter . Your consumer file is free once every twelve months. What you hand over is identity. Google's monitor wants every address, phone, email, nickname and maiden name you've used. California's DROP requires name, date of birth and ZIP code. Skip the credit card at PACER and the activation code comes by mail in 7 to 10 business days , and it can't be emailed, faxed or read to you. What makes a dirty record look clean An empty employment-screening file is not an all-clear. The CFPB says it plainly: many employment screening companies won't have information on you unless you authorized an employer or other end-user to obtain a report. The damaging report gets assembled when somebody orders it , out of court records and the files underneath, so audit the sources rather than the screeners. Same trap on the search layer, where an empty "To review" tab looks identical to being clean . Start Google's monitor before anything else Sign in and go to myactivity.google.com/results-about-you , then choose "Get started" , or "Settings" if you've been there before. There is no signed-out version , and Google's help page says the feature is rolling out for users over the age of 18 in certain markets without publishing the market list. Do this step first , because it's the only layer that keeps watching for new results and emails you when they appear. Enter every version of your name along with the information you want matched. Google's accepted fields include nickname, maiden name, multiple personal phone numbers, multiple home addresses and multiple email addresses , plus Social Security, passport and driver's license numbers. The variants are the whole point. A married name entered without the maiden name misses every record filed under the old one, and those are the ones that surprise people. Turn notifications on, then watch the "To review" tab, where matches land and Google emails you. Nothing there removes anything by itself : you select a result, choose "Request to remove" , and follow it under "Removal requests" . While that populates, run the searches by hand in a private window, signed out, so you're reading a stranger's results instead of your own . Search your name in quotes, then your name plus your city, then your name plus your employer. Find out what Google will refuse before you file anything Google's personal-information route covers a closed list, published on its removal policy page : your address, phone number or email, Social Security or tax ID numbers, resident ID card number, bank or credit card number, pictures of your signature or ID , private records such as medical records, and confidential usernames and passwords. Doxxing qualifies when your personal info runs alongside explicit or implicit threats, or when there's a significant amount of aggregated personal info without a legitimate purpose . The link to start is labeled "Start removal request" . Approval is de-indexing, not deletion. Google states that it can only remove things from Google Search results, that the info still exists on the source web page , and that people might still find it through links, social media or other search engines. It also won't remove your personal contact info from pages owned by educational or government institutions, online newspapers, or business websites , and it may leave up anything it treats as newsworthy. Read that list before you build a plan around removals, because it is most of what people are actually worried about. When a site has actually deleted or edited the page and Google still shows the old text, don't file a removal request . Sign in to Refresh Outdated Content , pick the "Page" or "Image" tab, paste the URL and "Submit" . It does nothing if the live page still shows the information : the page has to have already been changed or taken down, and it is not a removal tool. If you're in California, send one request to every broker Go to privacy.ca.gov/drop and choose "Get started with DROP" . The state says one request reaches over 600 registered data brokers . Residency runs through the California Identity Gateway , and you don't create an account there. Required fields are name, date of birth and ZIP code , and that is the entire mandatory set. There is no national equivalent , so outside California you're filing opt-outs one broker at a time. Add the optional identifiers anyway. Email addresses, phone numbers, Mobile Advertising ID (MAID) , Connected TV ID and vehicle identification number (VIN) are all optional, and the agency states the trade plainly: the more information you enter, the more likely your data will be deleted . Submit, then save the 8-digit DROP ID from the confirmation page. You can have it emailed at submission, and it's what you need later to check status. Come back through "Check DROP status" and read the labels honestly. "Record not found" and "Opted-out" are not proof your data is gone. The first means the broker has nothing or couldn't locate you; the second means it couldn't make an exact match and has only stopped selling. The fix for both is more identifiers added to the same request. Brokers had to begin processing on August 1, 2026, have up to 90 days to report back, and must re-check and delete new matching data at least every 45 days after that. DROP will not touch the two layers that cost people jobs. Its exemptions are explicit: public records like vehicle or real estate ownership and voting records, patient health information under HIPAA, information that affects your credit score under the Fair Credit Reporting Act , and financial information under Gramm-Leach-Bliley. So it reaches nothing in your court record and nothing in your background file. It also doesn't cover what you gave a business directly , which is a separate privacy request you make to that business yourself. Pull the file your background check is actually built from Order your LexisNexis Consumer Disclosure Report , which carries real estate transaction and ownership data, lien, judgment and bankruptcy records, professional license information and historical addresses . Three routes: "Request a Consumer Disclosure Report Online" , the "Printable Request Form" mailed to LexisNexis Risk Solutions Consumer Center, P.O. Box 105108, Atlanta, GA 30348-5108, or the phone at 1-866-897-8126. Start it today, because even the online route goes through the mail. LexisNexis says that once it has verified and processed your request, you receive a letter by U.S. Mail explaining how to access the report online. No turnaround time is published , so anyone quoting you one is guessing. Order it before you need it, not in the week a background check is already running. Then go to employees.theworknumber.com and choose "Register" or "Log In" . You no longer need an employer code. "View Your Data" shows the employment and income data held on you, and it also shows the names of any verifiers that have requested your information in the last 24 months . "Freeze Your Data" is available at any time and at no cost, and "Dispute Your Data" is where an error goes. Think before you freeze. The freeze is free, but it's also what a mortgage lender or a new employer hits when they try to verify you, so set it while you're not applying for anything. For everyone else holding a file, work the CFPB's list of consumer reporting companies , current as of January 2025, using "Download as CSV" . Employment-screening entries marked "Free report" include Asurint, Cisive, backgroundchecks.com, DISA Global Solutions, Pre-employ.com, Universal Background Screening, ADP Screening & Selection Services and The Work Number. Ask for the two things nobody asks for When you request a file, ask for more than the data. 15 U.S.C. 1681g entitles you to all information in your file, the sources of that information , and the identification of each person, including each end user, who obtained a consumer report on you. Put that sentence in the request. A request that only says "send me my report" gets you the data and none of the rest, and the rest is the part worth having. The recipient list is the payoff of the whole audit. It runs back two years for employment purposes and one year for any other purpose, and it must carry the name of the person or, where it applies, the trade name written in full. Ask and you also get their address and telephone number. That list tells you who has already been checking you out, and when something in a report is wrong it tells you exactly which company to aim the dispute at. 15 U.S.C. 1681j makes that disclosure free once during any 12-month period and requires delivery not later than 15 days after the request. It applies to nationwide and nationwide specialty consumer reporting agencies, which is the category LexisNexis and The Work Number sit in. The smaller screeners still owe you the 1681g file when you ask; the 12-month and 15-day clocks are what you cite to the specialty bureaus. These are entitlements, not customer service. A specialty bureau still sitting on your request past fifteen days is out of compliance, and the statute is what you cite in the follow-up. Search the federal courts, then go get the county ones Register for PACER, Case Search Only . There is no fee to register. Provide a credit card and you get prompt access; leave it off and an activation code is mailed to you, 7 to 10 business days , and for security reasons it can't be emailed, faxed or given over the phone. Start this the same day you start everything else , so the code is in hand by the time you need it. Search your name across the national index at the PACER Case Locator . Fees are 10 cents per page, capped at 3 dollars per document , and you're only billed if you accrue more than 30 dollars in the previous quarter, so a personal audit is normally free . Court opinions are always free. The threshold resets quarterly rather than annually, so a long afternoon of searching is what tips you into an actual bill. PACER is federal only. State and county courts are separate systems with their own search tools and their own fees, and a case that never went federal will not appear in PACER at all . List every county you've lived in, then search each clerk of courts by name and date range. There's no national index for that layer, so budget an evening and do it by hand. What this audit cannot fix, and what to do with each dead end A refusal on public-interest grounds doesn't change by resubmitting. Google won't take your contact info off pages owned by educational or government institutions, online newspapers, or businesses, and it may leave up anything it treats as newsworthy. Nobody removes those, including any firm quoting you a price to . What's left there is suppression rather than removal: building and ranking accurate pages you control so the old result stops being the first thing on your name. An inaccurate background file is a dispute, not a removal. You go back to the company that furnished it, and the source list you asked for under 1681g is what tells you which one that is. A federal court hit on a sealed, expunged or dismissed matter belongs to the court that issued it , not to a search engine, and it's a filing in that court rather than a form you submit anywhere online. Run this once and you have a baseline, not a solution. Brokers repost, people-search sites spin up new URLs for the same profile, and a screener assembles a fresh report every time somebody orders one. Put a date in the calendar, run the identical searches, and check your DROP status. The point is knowing which of the four problems you actually have before you spend money solving a different one. On this page Start Google's monitor before anything else Find out what Google will refuse before you file anything If you're in California, send one request to every broker Pull the file your background check is actually built from Ask for the two things nobody asks for Search the federal courts, then go get the county ones What this audit cannot fix, and what to do with each dead end Written by Drew Chapin → Updated 2026-09-08 Rather not do this yourself? Personal Reputation Management → Related guides How to use Google's removal tools on a court record → How to make your home address unsearchable → Why your expunged record is still showing online → The audit tells you which problem you have Run the four layers yourself this week. When the list comes back and the first two pages of your name are the problem, Personal Reputation Management is $2,488 , one time, and it covers the whole thing: a written result-by-result assessment, the removals filed and chased with a result on every one, accurate pages built and promoted to outrank whatever stays, and monitoring included indefinitely so you're not the one checking. Have us do it. Everything above, filed for you, chased for you, and reported back. One flat fee. See the service → Every guide we publish is free and ungated. Browse all of them , see what we do and what it costs , or read why we built this company . Written by Drew Chapin , who ran all of this on his own name first. © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## Which states ban mugshot removal fees: six order a takedown, five only pay you damages
URL: https://discoverability.co/guides/which-states-ban-mugshot-removal-fees/

Home / Guides / Content removal: who published it decides what comes down News and articles Which states ban mugshot removal fees: six order a takedown, five only pay you damages Screenshot the payment demand before you do anything else , then work the law of the state you were arrested in first, and check your own state's fee ban second. Six states put a removal deadline on the website. Five more make the fee illegal and never order a takedown. Which of those two your state is in decides whether you're mailing a letter or hiring a lawyer , so settle that before you write a word. What you actually get Two different outcomes, and only one of them takes the page down. Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Oregon, Wyoming and Utah put a removal deadline on the website , so a correctly built letter ends with the photo gone. Arizona, California, Missouri, Virginia and Illinois never order a takedown at all. They make the fee unlawful and hand you damages, which means a demand letter there gets a lawful no and the remedy is a lawsuit. What you have to hand over Proof of how the case ended, certified only where South Carolina says certified. South Carolina wants certified documentation that the charges were discharged, dismissed, expunged, or that you were found not guilty. Oregon and Wyoming take paper or electronic copies of official court or law enforcement records. Utah's seven-day track wants evidence of an acquittal, non-prosecution, expungement, vacatur or pardon. Florida asks for no disposition at all , only sufficient proof of identification and which photograph you mean. What stops it working A conviction that still stands. South Carolina, Oregon and Wyoming all key their deadline to a favorable outcome, so a conviction that hasn't been expunged or set aside starts no clock in any of the three. Georgia adds exactly one conviction, a drug possession charge where you finished probation. Utah's thirty-day track runs on a bare request but lets the site charge you up to $50 , and only Florida orders a free takedown with no disposition attached at all. Screenshot the price before you send anything Open the page and copy the exact URL , then screenshot whatever the site is asking you to pay. The price isn't trivia here. Utah, Oregon and Wyoming only reach a website that charges a fee to remove a booking photograph , and Texas doesn't reach an entity at all unless it charges $150 or more to remove, or any fee to correct . A site that takes the photo down for free sits outside all four. Don't pay, and don't negotiate the price down. California and Missouri both count every payment as a separate violation, so a site that charges you is stacking its own liability, but paying still takes the demand off the screen and buys you nothing you can enforce. Keep the screenshot in the same folder as the URL , because once the page changes it's the only proof the site was ever charging. Write down what identifies the photo, because two of these statutes require it inside the letter. Florida wants specific information identifying the arrest booking photograph. South Carolina wants a complete and accurate description of where the records are located, including the URL and the e-edition if there is one. Copy the address character for character, and note any record or booking number the page prints next to your name. The state you were arrested in is the state whose law you use Where you live now usually doesn't decide this. South Carolina's section covers a person arrested and booked in South Carolina. Missouri defines a booking photograph as one taken in this state by an arresting law enforcement agency, and Georgia uses the same words. California runs the other way: Civil Code 1798.91.1 defines a booking photograph as one taken pursuant to an arrest, with no in-state limit, and subdivision (f) puts venue in the county where you live, so a California resident arrested in another state can still sue a site that charges them. So before anything else, write down the state of the arrest, your name, the date of the arrest, and the name of the arresting agency. South Carolina and Georgia both require the last three inside the request, and Georgia also wants your date of birth. Then find which family your state is in. Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Oregon, Wyoming and Utah put a deadline on the website , so a written request is the whole remedy and it works without a lawyer. Arizona, California, Missouri, Virginia and Illinois make the fee unlawful and stop there. Illinois adds a five-business-day duty to correct an error, but only on a site that charges, and correcting a record isn't taking it down. Two statutes turn up on every list of these laws and neither one gives you anything to mail. Colorado's booking-photo section is 24-72-305.5, and it governs who may obtain a copy from the records custodian , making it an unclassified misdemeanor to get one for a pay-to-remove site. It puts no duty on the website. Georgia has two statutes and only one is yours : 35-1-19 restricts what the arresting agency may hand out, and 10-1-393.5 is the one that orders a removal. Get the disposition document, certified where the statute says certified Call the clerk of courts in the county that handled the case and ask for a certified copy of your disposition , with your docket number and arrest date in front of you when you dial. South Carolina is the strict one : Section 17-1-60 requires certified documentation that the original charges were discharged, dismissed, expunged, or that you were found not guilty. A screenshot of an online docket isn't certified documentation, and sending one gets you nothing. Georgia's list of triggers is the longest. The eight in O.C.G.A. 10-1-393.5 include acquittal, dismissal, charges never referred for prosecution, an expired statute of limitations, two no bills from a grand jury, and a drug possession conviction where you completed probation successfully . ORS 646A.806 and W.S. 40-12-601 take paper or electronic copies of official court or law enforcement records instead, and Oregon alone also covers charges reduced to violations . Both sit inside a full-chapter document, so search the section number on arrival. Utah Code 17-72-802 runs two tracks off one letter. Attach evidence of an acquittal, non-prosecution, expungement, vacatur or pardon and the site gets seven calendar days and can't charge you a cent. Send a bare request with nothing attached and it gets thirty days and may lawfully charge you up to $50 . Florida goes the other way and asks for no disposition at all, only sufficient proof of identification and which photograph you mean. Mail it to the registered agent, in the class your statute names Florida Statute 901.43 says registered mail to the registered agent, and nothing else satisfies it . Not the contact form, not the support address printed on the page. Look the publisher up by name on the Florida Division of Corporations Search Records page , open its filing, and copy the registered agent's name and street address off it. Registered Mail is bought at a Post Office counter and handed to a clerk, so budget the trip. South Carolina and Georgia both want certified mail, return receipt requested , and both let you address it to the registered agent, the principal place of business, or the primary residence. Georgia also accepts statutory overnight delivery. South Carolina's letter carries your name, arrest date, arresting agency, the certified documentation and the URL. Georgia's carries your name, date of birth, arrest date and arresting agency. Look the company up on South Carolina's Business Name Search . Oregon, Wyoming and Utah only say the request has to be in writing , with no mail class attached. Send it certified anyway, because the return receipt is what proves when the clock started. Texas works differently: the entity has to publish an email address, fax number or mailing address for disputes, so send yours to the address the site published rather than drafting a demand letter to an agent. Put the deadline on a calendar the day you mail it Florida is ten calendar days. South Carolina, Georgia, Oregon and Wyoming are thirty. Utah is thirty calendar days on a bare request and seven calendar days when you attached the disposition evidence. Write that date on the folder holding your screenshot, your URL list and your mailing receipt, because the day after it is when the statute stops being a request and starts being a claim. The clocks don't all start in the same place, and this is where people miscount. Florida and South Carolina run from receipt, so the delivery date on the return receipt is day zero. Georgia runs from the sending of the request. Oregon, Wyoming and Utah run from the date of the request itself. Keep the postmarked receipt and the signed return receipt, because between them they prove both dates. Two of these clocks aren't removal clocks at all. Illinois 815 ILCS 505/2QQQ gives a site that charges five business days to fix an error after you send a certified letter demanding the correction and providing documentation of the correct information, with $100 a day and attorney's fees if it doesn't. Texas gives an entity forty-five business days to finish investigating your dispute and five business days after that to write to you with the result . Neither one ends with the page gone. When the deadline passes and the photo is still up Florida hands you an injunction. Once the ten days lapse you can sue to enjoin the publication, and the court may impose $1,000 a day for noncompliance with that injunction, $5,000 a day if the site republishes the photo after taking it down, plus your attorney fees and costs. Refusing after a written request is separately an unfair or deceptive trade practice under Chapter 501 . Utah pays $50 a day past the thirty-day deadline and $100 a day past the seven-day one , plus costs and fees, and a fee demanded on that seven-day track is theft by extortion. Oregon and Wyoming route a violation through the state's unfair trade practices act, which in Wyoming means the enforcing authority can move, not only you . South Carolina's takedown subsection is carved out of the criminal penalty, so a failure to remove there is a lawsuit and not a charge. In the five states that only ban the fee, the number is the entire remedy. Missouri is the biggest: $10,000, or actual and punitive damages, whichever is greater , plus fees, and its statute says humiliation or embarrassment alone shows damages with no physical manifestation required. California is the greater of $1,000 per violation or actual damages, and you can file in the county where you live . Arizona escalates to $500 a day, and Virginia is actual damages or $500. What none of these laws does No state on this page bans publishing your mugshot. Arrest records are public, so every one of these statutes goes after the pay-to-remove transaction or the supply of the photograph instead. Several then carve themselves back out. Virginia, Illinois and Texas each say the section imposes no liability on an interactive computer service , and Arizona, South Carolina and Texas exempt news organizations, so the paper that ran your booking photo is untouched by all of it. Florida only reaches two kinds of site : one that solicits or accepts payment to remove, and one whose primary business model is publishing booking photographs commercially. A general news site republishing your photo sits outside it. And check your section number before you cite anything, because Utah's law moved from 17-22-30 to 17-72-802 when the legislature renumbered it in 2025 , and most pages listing these laws still print the old one. Thirteen states are named on this page, and they're the ones whose statutes we read end to end. If yours isn't here, that isn't proof it has nothing, so ask the clerk or a lawyer where you were arrested. The harder limit is collection, because plenty of these operators sit offshore, which makes a statute leverage for a demand letter and a payment-processor complaint rather than money you'll actually see. None of it seals or expunges the court's own file or the sheriff's roster. On this page Screenshot the price before you send anything The state you were arrested in is the state whose law you use Get the disposition document, certified where the statute says certified Mail it to the registered agent, in the class your statute names Put the deadline on a calendar the day you mail it When the deadline passes and the photo is still up What none of these laws does Written by Drew Chapin → Updated 2026-09-08 Rather not do this yourself? Content Removal → Related guides How to remove arrest records from Google → Reputation management after an arrest → How to use Google's removal tools on a court record → You've got the statute. Somebody still has to mail it. Content Removal is $499 to $1,999 per case , priced by what the host site's own policy allows. We find every copy of the photograph, send the demand your state's statute actually prescribes to the registered agent it names, track the deadline off the return receipt, and keep re-checking after the page comes down in case it goes back up. Have us do it. Everything above, filed for you, chased for you, and reported back. One flat fee. See the service → Every guide we publish is free and ungated. Browse all of them , see what we do and what it costs , or read why we built this company . Written by Drew Chapin , who ran all of this on his own name first. © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## Why your expunged record is still showing online
URL: https://discoverability.co/guides/why-your-expunged-record-is-still-online/

Home / Guides / Court record removal: what actually comes down Guide Why your expunged record is still showing online You searched your name, found the case you had expunged, and it's sitting on a site you've never heard of. Your order binds the clerk of courts, not a private website , so nobody forwarded it and nobody will. What comes down, comes down because you ask each site directly and hand it the order. Pull a search for your name and copy every URL that shows the case. That list is what you're filing. What you get De-indexed, not deleted. CourtListener blocks the page from search engines and keeps the document, and its policy says it won't remove a public document without a court order. UniCourt de-indexes the URL too. On CourtListener the page stays live at the same URL for anyone holding the direct link . What you have to send A certified copy of the order, with the docket number legible. UniCourt asks for the conformed court order and only considers requests carrying all the required documentation, so a screenshot of the docket or your account of what the judge said gets denied. Send the stamped order, and keep proof of the date you sent it. What stops it working Your order names the clerk, not the website. That's the refusal you'll hit most often. Ask for a de-index, not a deletion : CourtListener won't remove a public document without a court order naming Free Law Project, and UniCourt's redaction request is a de-index too. Start with the URL list, then split it Search your full name in quotes, then search the case caption, then write down every URL that comes back. The aggregators and the mugshot sites act on URLs, not on names , so that list is the thing you're filing. There's no name-level opt-out at any of them, and a case sitting on three URLs is three separate requests. Split the list into three piles, because each one takes a different request and a different piece of proof: the court's own portal, a court-record aggregator, and a pay-to-remove mugshot site. Then order your background check separately , because that copy never turns up in a search for your name and it's the one that costs you a job. Go back to the clerk for the court's own portal Send the clerk of courts a certified copy of the order and the docket number, in writing, and keep the receipt that shows when you sent it. This one isn't a removal request and no website is involved in it. If the clerk doesn't act, go back to the judge for enforcement. This runs jurisdiction by jurisdiction and no national rule sets a deadline , so plan on chasing it rather than waiting on it. Send the two aggregator requests today, both free CourtListener takes a de-index request through its contact page , and the written policy makes the whole requirement a written request containing links to the pages you want blocked . No government ID, no docket number, no notarization, no fee. Open that policy, follow its link to the contact page, and do it in a browser, because the form sits behind an anti-bot challenge. Paste the exact URLs rather than describing the case. They state no turnaround, and they warn that search engines may not drop your case from their results for many months, if at all. UniCourt takes the free Public Records Redaction Request , and the first question on its policy is "Has the record been sealed or expunged by a court order?", so this is the site where your order does the most work. Only a party to the record, that party's legal guardian or fiduciary, or an attorney representing them can file , which means you send this one yourself. One URL per request, and the conformed order goes on the upload. Then wait. UniCourt states it typically decides within 30 days and that URLs are generally de-indexed by the search engines within about 30 days after that, so budget roughly sixty days to a clean result. Submitting, processing and appealing are free at UniCourt, and CourtListener's policy carries no payment term at all, so anyone invoicing you for either request is charging you to send a free form. Dispute the background check with the company that sold it Pull the report first, and dispute with the company whose name is on it. The CFPB publishes the list of consumer reporting companies , and it covers the specialty employment and tenant screeners alongside the big three, so find the right name before you write anything. Send the certified order, your government ID, and the specific report and the specific item you're disputing , and keep proof of mailing, because the clock runs from receipt. Under 15 U.S.C. 1681i the agency gets 30 days to reinvestigate , extendable by 15, and has to notify the furnisher within five business days. Section 1681e(b) is the backstop: reasonable procedures to assure maximum possible accuracy. Don't cite the CFPB's January 2024 advisory opinion on background screening in your dispute letter , the one saying an expunged record is inaccurate in a consumer report. It was withdrawn in 2025, and quoting withdrawn guidance hands them an easy first answer. If the item comes back, use the reinsertion rule It does come back sometimes, and Section 1681i(a)(5)(B) is your answer : deleted information can't be reinserted unless the furnisher certifies that it's complete and accurate, and the agency has to notify you in writing within five business days of the reinsertion, with that furnisher's name and address. Save that notice. It names the company feeding the record in, which is the address your next dispute goes to. While you're at it, re-run the same name search at 60, 90 and 180 days and check whether any aggregator page you had blocked has come back. Mugshot sites: send the statute, never the money Florida Statute 901.43 carries a removal duty with a deadline on it. Send a written request by registered mail to the publisher's registered agent , with proof of identification and information identifying the photograph, and the publisher has to remove it without charge within 10 calendar days of receipt . Dismissal, acquittal and expungement aren't required , a compliant request is enough. Enforcing it means bringing a civil action for an injunction, so keep the registered-mail receipt , because it's the proof of the date the clock started. California Civil Code 1798.91.1 is a fee ban, not a removal duty , so in California stop asking for a takedown you can't compel and document the fee demand instead : each payment solicited or accepted is a separate violation. Don't pay. In California the fee demand is itself the cause of action. If the site is anonymously hosted with no agent to serve, Google's exploitative removal practices policy is the lever left: you're the subject of the content, the site isn't a business review site, and it demands payment to take the page down. All three have to hold, and you supply the URLs plus screenshots of the fee demand through the removal form . Clean Google last, and what none of this fixes Run Google's cleanup after the source is fixed, never before. The Refresh Outdated Content tool only works once the page is already gone or materially changed, and Google says outright it won't remove a page that still exists and hasn't changed. You'll need a Google account to open it. Don't waste a week on the personal information form either: that policy covers contact details, ID and account numbers, medical records and credentials, and court history isn't on the list . Google commits to no turnaround on any of this, so don't build your calendar around one. Taking down a copy doesn't seal or expunge the court's own record , and nothing you send reaches the clerk's file. A news article about the arrest stays. And the FCRA's seven-year clock at 15 U.S.C. 1681c bars old arrest records but expressly not convictions , and switches off entirely for jobs paying $75,000 or more. What all of this costs you is time. Building the URL list, then attaching the certified order to a separate form for every site, one URL at a time , then searching your own name again at 60, 90 and 180 days and re-filing whatever came back. The requests are free and you can send them yourself. Put the 60, 90 and 180 day checks in your calendar before you close this page. On this page Start with the URL list, then split it Go back to the clerk for the court's own portal Send the two aggregator requests today, both free Dispute the background check with the company that sold it If the item comes back, use the reinsertion rule Mugshot sites: send the statute, never the money Clean Google last, and what none of this fixes Written by Drew Chapin → Updated 2026-09-08 Rather not do this yourself? Court Record Removal → Related guides How to remove court records from Google → How to remove arrest records from Google → The rest of the sites on your list Send the CourtListener and UniCourt requests yourself, free, and you should. When the same case also sits on Justia, CaseMine and Trellis, Court Record Removal is $199 , one time, and we file every one of them. Have us do it. Everything above, filed for you, chased for you, and reported back. One flat fee. See the service → Every guide we publish is free and ungated. Browse all of them , see what we do and what it costs , or read why we built this company . Written by Drew Chapin , who ran all of this on his own name first. © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## Why an AI assistant can't find your podcast: there's no text to read
URL: https://discoverability.co/guides/why-your-podcast-is-invisible-to-ai/

Home / Guides / Making a podcast findable: the free afternoon, then the catalog Podcasts Why an AI assistant can't find your podcast: there's no text to read An AI assistant can't find your show because there's no text for it to read. Google's own list of indexable file types has no audio format on it, and every assistant that cites a source is reading an ordinary web page. Your MP3 isn't one. The fix is a page per episode on a domain you own, carrying the full transcript in the HTML. Here's the order to do it in, and what breaks it. What you get: eligibility, not a promise A transcript page turns your episode into the thing these systems actually read: an ordinary indexed web page . For Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode that is the entire published bar, and Google's own wording is that a page needs to be indexed and snippet-eligible and there are no additional technical requirements . It also says indexing is never guaranteed, and no vendor publishes a time to first citation . Anyone selling you a date, a citation count, or a ranking inside ChatGPT is selling something nobody measures. What it costs you: a domain, and editing time There's no ID to upload, no application, no fee to any platform, and nothing to submit anywhere. You need a domain you control and somewhere to publish pages on it. The real cost is the transcript itself, because a machine transcript has to be read and corrected before it goes up . Speech recognition mangles guest names, company names and figures, and that is the exact text an assistant would quote back about you. What stops it: a transcript the crawler never receives Text drawn in by JavaScript after the page loads, hidden behind a click to expand, or linked out as a VTT or PDF download is not text in your page . Request your own episode page with a plain HTTP GET and no browser, then search the response for a sentence from the middle of the episode. If it isn't in there, nothing else in this guide has anything to work on. None of the three answering agents documents whether it runs JavaScript, so don't gamble on it. Find out whether a page of yours exists at all Copy the address of your most recent episode, the one you'd send somebody. If it's on podcasts.apple.com, on open.spotify.com, or on your podcast host's share domain, you don't have an episode page. You have a listing on somebody else's site. That's the whole problem, and nothing further down this page fixes it until that changes. The transcripts Apple and Spotify already make for you don't count, because they never reach the open web. Apple's live inside the app: touch and hold a podcast episode, then tap View Transcript , which needs iOS 17.4 or later, and a listener can select and copy up to 200 words. Spotify's show up in the Now Playing View and on episode pages in the Spotify mobile app. Fetch either company's public web page for your show and the transcript text simply isn't in it. If you do already have episode pages on your own domain, test one before you build anything new . Request it with a plain HTTP GET, no browser, and grep the response for a distinctive sentence from the middle of the episode. Present means this part of the job is done and you can skip to letting the crawlers in. Absent means the transcript is being injected client-side, and you're relying on a rendering behavior none of these vendors has committed to . Publish one page per episode on a domain you own One episode, one page, one stable URL. The page's main purpose is that single conversation , not your archive, not a player embed, not a share link that redirects somewhere else. Point the link element inside that episode's RSS item at it, so every app and every crawler reading your feed has an address that belongs to you. Google publishes exactly three technical requirements for a page to be eligible for indexing: Googlebot isn't blocked, the page returns an HTTP 200 status code, and the page has indexable content . Two of those are a hosting question you can settle in a minute. The third is the entire rest of this guide. Google's guidance for video says the same thing in the analogous case, and it's worth reading before you assume a page is enough: the watch page must be indexed, and the indexed watch page must be performing well in Search before its video can be considered for indexing. A page that exists is the floor here, not the finish line. Put the whole transcript in the page's HTML This is the step that does the work, and it's the one people skip. Google indexes text-based files and certain encoded documents, and the media formats it lists are images and video. No audio format appears anywhere on that list . Not MP3, not M4A, not WAV. An audio enclosure in an RSS feed has no textual content to index, so the transcript is the only thing that converts your episode into something a crawler can hold. Render it as text in the body of the page, from the server. Not a linked VTT file, not a downloadable PDF, and not a panel that loads when somebody clicks it. If a plain HTTP GET returns the words, you're done. If it takes a browser to see them, you've built the same invisible thing you started with. Then build the human layer around it, because a wall of raw text clears the bar and still isn't worth citing. Episode title, a real summary, guest names and what they actually do, timestamps, topic headings, and links to whatever was discussed. That's what makes the page answer a question instead of merely containing words. Get a transcript worth publishing The fastest honest route is to export the machine transcript your platform already made and fix it. In Spotify for Creators : log in at creators.spotify.com, go to Episodes , select an episode and click Details , find Transcripts and click Edit , then click Download above the transcript to get a VTT file. Edit it on your machine, then Upload transcript , Select a file , and Save . Two limits Spotify states on that page and one trap. The file has to be VTT or SRT, the maximum size is 5MB, and timestamps are required or the transcript won't sync during playback. The trap: if you upload your own transcript, it'll be replaced if you enable auto-generated ones . Decide which one you want and leave the toggle alone afterwards. If Apple is your source instead, know the boundary before you plan around it. Apple's automatic transcripts cover English, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish, and private RSS feeds aren't processed at all , so nothing is generated for episodes that aren't in the Apple Podcasts catalog. Whatever the source, read it before you publish it. YouTube's warning about its own automatic captions is the right standard for all of them: they might misrepresent the spoken content due to mispronunciations, accents, dialects, or background noise , and you should always review them and edit any parts that haven't been properly transcribed. Raw speech recognition output published unedited puts a misspelled guest name into the sentence an assistant repeats about you. Let the answering crawlers in Check your robots.txt against the named agents one at a time, not as a group: OAI-SearchBot for ChatGPT search, Claude-SearchBot and Claude-User for Claude, PerplexityBot for Perplexity, and Googlebot for Google. OpenAI's wording is blunt: sites that are opted out of OAI-SearchBot will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers, though can still appear as navigational links. Check your CDN and your firewall rules too, more than the file. Blocking a training crawler is not the same as blocking a search crawler, and sites get this backwards constantly. GPTBot and ClaudeBot collect content for model training. OAI-SearchBot and Claude-SearchBot are the ones that put you in an answer. A blanket AI block added in a hurry usually cuts off the surface you actually wanted to be on. For Google specifically, the control for Search and its AI features is Googlebot , and Google-Extended is a separate lever covering training and grounding in Google's other systems. Allow Googlebot if you want to be in AI Overviews and AI Mode. And give a robots.txt change a day before you judge it : OpenAI says it can take roughly 24 hours from an update for its systems to adjust, and Perplexity says the same. Add the tag to your feed, then stop adding things The RSS tag is podcast:transcript , and it goes on each item. Its spec requires two attributes, url and type , where type is a mime type such as text/plain, text/html, text/vtt, application/json or application/x-subrip. Language and rel are optional, and multiple tags per episode are allowed , so you can point one at your episode page as text/html and another at a VTT file. This is what makes Apple use your transcript instead of its own. Apple ingests it via your RSS feed and accepts VTT or SRT , and it says providing a VTT file is what lets you identify every speaker with each line. Change the show-wide default in the Availability tab on your show page in Apple Podcasts Connect. To override a single episode, open the episode, go to Audio and Transcripts , select the episode media and click Edit , then on the Episode Transcript Availability screen choose Use a custom setting for this episode , set it to Display transcripts I provide , and click Save . In Spotify for Creators the equivalent is Settings , then Transcripts , then the Distribute transcripts across other platforms via RSS toggle, then Save . Be clear about what that tag buys, though. It serves podcast apps and Apple. No AI vendor documents reading it , so ship it for your listeners and don't expect it to do the transcript page's job. Then stop. Google's line is that you don't need to create new machine readable files, AI text files, or markup to appear in these features, and there's no special schema.org structured data that you need to add . The podcast surface is gone too: Google's podcast structured data page now returns a 404, and Podcast is absent from its structured data gallery . Any advice telling you to add Podcast markup for a rich result is describing something that no longer exists. If it still isn't showing up Work it in this order. First, confirm the page is indexed in Google at all , using the URL Inspection tool in Search Console. Google says the bar for AI Overviews and AI Mode is being indexed and snippet-eligible with no additional technical requirements, so a page missing from the index is an ordinary indexing problem, not an AI problem , and that's a different and much older job. Second, read the page's robots meta tag and its HTTP headers for noindex, nosnippet, and max-snippet . This is the silent one. Google states that nosnippet applies to AI Overviews and AI Mode and will also prevent the content from being used as a direct input for them, and that max-snippet:0 is equivalent to nosnippet . A theme or a host template that sets either leaves your page indexed, ranking, and uncitable, with nothing on screen to tell you. Third, re-test robots.txt a day after you changed it rather than the same afternoon. If everything above is clean and assistants still don't surface the show, the gap is the pages themselves and not the plumbing : thin ASR walls with no summary, no headings, no guest identification and no internal links get indexed and still don't get quoted. Say plainly what this doesn't do. It doesn't move your Apple or Spotify chart position, it doesn't change your download numbers, and it doesn't oblige any assistant to cite you. Nobody publishes a time to first citation, and no primary source states one , so treat any promised date as invented. What it does is stop the honest answer to why you're invisible being that there was nothing there to read. On this page Find out whether a page of yours exists at all Publish one page per episode on a domain you own Put the whole transcript in the page's HTML Get a transcript worth publishing Let the answering crawlers in Add the tag to your feed, then stop adding things If it still isn't showing up Written by Drew Chapin → Updated 2026-09-08 Rather not do this yourself? Podcast Growth → Related guides Schema markup, and what it actually buys you → How to appear in AI search results: there's nothing to submit → Every episode you've already published is a page you don't have Do one episode yourself this week, because you'll learn exactly what the work is. A back catalog is a different job, and that's what Podcast Growth is: an episode page for every conversation, on a domain you own, carrying an edited transcript and the written content around your guests and subjects . Send us your feed and we'll show you what people are already searching for in it. Have us do it. Everything above, filed for you, chased for you, and reported back. One flat fee. See the service → Every guide we publish is free and ungated. Browse all of them , see what we do and what it costs , or read why we built this company . Written by Drew Chapin , who ran all of this on his own name first. © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## How to get a citation or link added to a Wikipedia article you don't control
URL: https://discoverability.co/guides/wikipedia-link-insertion-how-it-works/

Home / Guides Wikipedia How to get a citation or link added to a Wikipedia article you don't control You can't add the link yourself, and nobody can sell you one. The only route into an article that already exists is a request on its talk page that a volunteer you've never met accepts or declines. Your source has to be independent and secondary, so if it's the piece you paid to publish, this stops right here . Everything else is a form of words, and you can post it today. What you actually get A request in a queue, and a stranger decides . If it's accepted, your source becomes a footnote holding up a fact in the article, written in the article's voice rather than yours. The reviewer can also clear you to make the edit yourself, mark it partially done, or decline it. Declined is a normal answer here , not an accident. What you have to hand over If anybody is being paid, the names go public. Wikimedia's terms of use make you disclose each and any employer, client, intended beneficiary and affiliation, in one of three places: your user page, the talk page carrying the request, or the edit summary. An NDA doesn't get you out of it. A paid editor who can't disclose is prohibited from editing outright. There's no ID check and no fee. What stops it working The source is what kills these, not the wording. Sponsored content is a paid advertisement formatted to look like an article, and it gets treated as self-published and primary. A press release a newspaper reprinted with minimal change is churnalism, read as the release itself. Paying for the coverage is what destroys it as a citation , so a placement you bought can't be the thing you ask them to cite. Check your source first, because it decides everything else There's no paid route into an existing article, and the paid version of a link is built to do nothing. Google's spam policies call exchanging money for links, or for posts that contain links, link spam, and they let a paid link stand only when it's qualified with rel="sponsored" or rel="nofollow" , at which point it passes no ranking credit. What you're asking for is a citation , and the rest of this is how that request gets made. Open the article, find the sentence your source would support, then hold the source against one bar: independent, secondary, and reliable . Wikipedia's sourcing guideline defines sponsored content as a paid advertisement formatted to look like an article and treats it as self-published and primary. A press release a paper ran with minimal change is churnalism, read as the release itself . If your link is either one, nothing below rescues it. Two different rulebooks get confused here, and the mix-up costs weeks. The external links guideline says outright that it does not apply to inline citations or general references. So a commercial link that would never survive in an External links section can be perfectly legitimate as a footnote holding up a fact , and the footnote is the thing to ask for. Don't propose your own site. That same guideline tells you to avoid linking to a site that you own, maintain, or represent, even where the rules look like they'd allow it. What gets added is an independent source that happens to be about you , cited because it supports something the article says. Somebody other than you has to have written it. Disclose the money before you ask for anything If you're being paid to do this, or you're paying somebody to do it, the disclosure goes up before the request does . Wikimedia's terms of use require you to disclose each and any employer, client, intended beneficiary and affiliation for any contribution you're compensated for. That's a term of the contract you use the site under, not a community courtesy you get to weigh up. Three venues count, and only three: a statement on your user page, a statement on the talk page accompanying the contribution, or a statement in the edit summary . The user page form is {{paid|employer=name of employer|client=name of client}} , and the marker that goes on the article's talk page is {{connected contributor (paid)}} . Post yours first, so the request never reads like something you tried to slip past. The paid-contribution policy is blunt about the consequence: paid editors who cannot disclose their employer, client and affiliations are prohibited from editing , and non-disclosure agreements do not invalidate this requirement. If your client can't be named in public, there's no compliant version of this job , not by you and not by anyone you hire to do it quietly. Post the request on the article's talk page Do not edit the article. The conflict of interest guideline says you're strongly discouraged from editing affected articles directly, with one narrow opening: you may add independent reliable sources when another editor has asked for them , and even then it's better to supply them on the talk page for somebody else to add. Go to the article's talk page and click Add topic . On a protected article there's a second way in: the article's View source tab carries a Submit an edit request link at the bottom right that preloads the template onto that same talk page. Don't take it to the COI noticeboard , which exists to decide whether an editor has a conflict of interest and will buy you scrutiny of your account instead of action on the article. Paste the template unindented, with no leading colon and no asterisk , or the request never enters the queue: {{edit COI|summary=Add Short summary of requested change here}} . Under it go four things and nothing else, which the template's own page lists in order: the exact text to add or remove, the reason for it, at least one URL supporting it, and your signature, which is four tildes, ~~~~ . Write the ask as a diff, and the citation as a citation The edit request guidance hands you the constructions to use: Change X to Y. Insert X after/before Y. Remove X. Quote the existing sentence exactly, then give the exact sentence you want in its place. A paragraph describing the outcome you'd like gets declined as non-specific , and the reviewer will not supply the judgment you left out. Hand over a citation nobody has to rebuild. The citing guideline wants enough to identify the source: URL, author, article title, website name, publisher and publication date . Then match the format the article already uses, because each article should use one citation method or style throughout , and a footnote in a foreign style is extra work for the volunteer doing you a favor. Two mechanical details reviewers do enforce: the marker goes after adjacent punctuation such as periods and commas, with no space before it , and it never goes inside a section heading. If you want to hand them finished markup, Wikipedia's referencing help page walks through the pieces it is built from, a <ref> pair around a {{cite web}} or {{cite news}} template. Wait, then read the letter the reviewer leaves Nobody can give you a date. The guidance says it can take anywhere from a day to several months for an edit request to be acted upon, and on a semi-protected article it sets a floor: wait at least two weeks before asking follow-up questions . Put a date in your calendar, then leave it alone until that date arrives. The answer comes back as a letter on the template rather than a message to you. A means accepted and done. G means you're cleared to make the edit yourself. U means under review. P means partially done. D means declined. Open the article's history and read the actual change before you believe any of them, because partially done is the one people write down as done . Don't file it twice. Requests sit in a public queue of conflict of interest edit requests that volunteers work through, and a duplicate doesn't move you up it. What moves you up it is a request a stranger can execute in a minute without having to decide anything . When it comes back declined Fix the defect it names, and change nothing else. ADV means the wording reads promotional, so strip the adjectives and re-propose it as plain fact. V means the source doesn't support the claim, and that needs a different source, not a better argument. S means it wasn't specific, so restate it strictly as Change X to Y. The rest need a different move entirely. R means you asked to remove sourced content, which takes consensus rather than a request. C means no consensus, so it becomes a talk page discussion. LLM means it read as machine-generated, so write the next one yourself. And never answer a decline by editing the article , which is the move that turns a declined request into a conduct case. Sometimes the honest answer is that there's nothing to cite. If no independent reliable source exists yet, no phrasing rescues the request, and the work moves upstream to earning real coverage first. Volume is its own offense too: the spam guideline defines citation spamming as the repeated insertion of a particular citation in multiple articles by a single contributor , and every one of them can look defensible while the pattern gets reverted. If the article is on a news site, not Wikipedia No newsroom has an add a link door. The one sanctioned channel into a published article is the corrections desk, and it acts on factual error, not on link inventory. ProPublica's corrections page is the shape to expect: a page headed Corrections , an email address, no form and no button. Each outlet sets its own, and the fix renders on the article itself as a dated line starting Correction, followed by the date and what changed. So send an error report, not a request. Identify the article, quote the incorrect sentence, state the correct fact, and attach the primary evidence for it. The citation or the link you wanted is a byproduct of the outlet sourcing its own fix , never the ask itself. Ask for the link instead and you get no reply at all. Read that outlet's own corrections page before you send anything , because the address and the process are set per publication and nobody else's page tells you theirs. Outlets don't publish a turnaround time, so don't promise anyone a date . If they decline there's no appeal route in the US, the outlet's decision is final, and the lever left is a documented factual dispute to the standards editor. On this page Check your source first, because it decides everything else Disclose the money before you ask for anything Post the request on the article's talk page Write the ask as a diff, and the citation as a citation Wait, then read the letter the reviewer leaves When it comes back declined If the article is on a news site, not Wikipedia Written by Drew Chapin → Updated 2026-09-08 Rather not do this yourself? Wikipedia Page Creation → Related guides Schema markup, and what it actually buys you → The request is free. The sourcing is the work. Post it yourself today if your source holds up, because that part costs nothing but an afternoon. When the sourcing is what doesn't hold, our Wikipedia Page Creation and Citations service is $399 for the request work on an article that already exists, and $3,500 for a page that doesn't exist yet, with the page-creation fee refunded if the research says the subject doesn't qualify . We disclose by name, write the request as a diff, and answer the reviewers ourselves. Reviewers decide what gets accepted, and nobody can promise otherwise. Have us do it. Everything above, filed for you, chased for you, and reported back. One flat fee. See the service → Every guide we publish is free and ungated. Browse all of them , see what we do and what it costs , or read why we built this company . Written by Drew Chapin , who ran all of this on his own name first. © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## How to correct an error in your Wikipedia article
URL: https://discoverability.co/guides/wikipedia-page-maintenance-and-edits/

Home / Guides Wikipedia How to correct an error in your Wikipedia article You shouldn't fix it yourself. Editing an article about you, your employer or your client is the one move that gets the correction refused , so you disclose the connection and post a request on the article's Talk page for an unconnected volunteer to act on. It's free and needs no ID, and the wait runs from a day to several months . Here's the click path and the wording that gets acted on. What you actually get A request, not an edit. You're asking a volunteer with no connection to you to make the change, and they decide. The reviewer marks it accepted, partially done, or declined, and a decline carries a reason code that tells you what to fix. Six months of silence counts as a decline in Wikipedia's own instructions, so it stops being a pending item at that point rather than staying open forever. What it costs you No ID, no fee, no lawyer. What it costs is a public, permanent disclosure. You need an account in your own name, and if anyone is paying you, the Wikimedia Terms of Use require you to name each and any employer, client, intended beneficiary and affiliation on the record. That's a contract term you accepted when you made the account, not a community preference, and the wording is 'receive, or expect to receive,' so a pitched but still unbilled engagement already counts . The template that files it wrong Almost every PR and reputation-agency guide still tells you to post {{request edit}}, and that template is now a redirect to the protected-page queue. Use it and your correction lands in front of reviewers who handle a different problem, where it sits. The template for a conflict-of-interest request is {{edit COI}} , typed by hand on the article's Talk page. Nothing adds it for you. Register an account in your own name Make the account at Special:CreateAccount before anything else, and make it a person, not a brand . Wikipedia's username policy classes a name that's only a company, organization, website or product as a promotional username, and it doesn't permit shared accounts: any user account should represent an individual and not a group . An agency logging in as the client's name is a problem before the first request goes out. One human, one account, and you keep it. Everything you file is public and permanently attached to it, and a reviewer will look at that history before acting on what you send. Opening a second account after a decline doesn't work and puts the first one at risk, so register the account you're going to use for every request you ever send. Disclose before you write a word If money is involved in any form, employee, contractor, agency or freelancer, disclosure is mandatory under section 4 of the Wikimedia Terms of Use : you must disclose each and any employer, client, intended beneficiary and affiliation with respect to any contribution for which you receive, or expect to receive, compensation . The Terms accept a statement on your user page, on the talk page, or in the edit summary. English Wikipedia practice is to do the user page and the talk page both , so do both. On your user page, put {{paid|employer=name of employer|client=name of client}} . At the top of the article's Talk page , put {{Connected contributor (paid)|User1=Username|U1-employer=Name|U1-client=Name}} . That pair gets swapped constantly , and a disclosure sitting in the wrong place reads to a reviewer as no disclosure at all. If nobody's paying you and you're the subject, a relative, an officer or a close associate, the Terms of Use clause doesn't bite, but the conflict of interest guideline still expects the disclosure. Put {{Connected contributor|User1=Your username|U1-declared=yes}} at the top of the article's Talk page, and state the connection in the edit summary of anything you post . Optional on your user page: {{UserboxCOI|1=Wikipedia article name}} . Write the change out first Write a replacement, not a complaint. Wikipedia's edit request page gives the format outright: Change X to Y; Insert X after/before Y; Remove X . Quote the sentence that's wrong exactly as it stands in the article, then give the exact sentence you want in its place. A request that describes the problem instead of naming the replacement gets declined with the reason The request was not specific enough . Every addition needs a reliable, independent, published source, and every removal needs the sources that contradict what's on the page. Your own website, your press release and your company bio are none of those. Split a large correction into several small requests , because a volunteer will act on one discrete checkable change and stall on a bundled rewrite. Draft it by hand. The instruction is blunt: Do not use AI or LLM tools (such as ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, etc.) to write any part of your request. There's a decline code for a change that appears to be AI generated. Promotional wording draws a decline on tone alone , even when the fact underneath is right, so cut the adjectives and write it the way the rest of the article reads. Post it on the article's Talk page Open the article and click the Talk tab at the top, sitting next to Article. On the talk page, click the Add topic button (Wikipedia's own written instructions still call it New section, so look for either). Put a plain title in the Subject field, Edit request is fine, and don't argue the case in the heading. In the body, put {{edit COI}} on the first line by itself , then your request underneath, then ~~~~ at the end to sign. Those four tildes are what timestamps the request and queues it, so a request without them isn't properly filed. Use {{edit COI|N}} if this is your first request, {{edit COI|R}} for a substantial rewrite, and {{edit COI|summary=Short summary of requested change here}} to hand reviewers the one-line version. Preview it, confirm the template rendered as a box rather than as raw text, then save. In the Add topic tool the save button is also labeled Add topic ; if you land on the older form instead, the buttons are Show preview and Publish changes . Don't set the answer parameters yourself. A, G, U, P and D belong to the reviewer, and marking your own request answered takes it off the list of open ones. The no-editing rule is a guideline, not an absolute. The conflict of interest guideline says you are strongly discouraged from editing the article directly, and it names the edits you may still make yourself: remove spam and unambiguous vandalism, remove unambiguous violations of the biography of living persons policy, fix spelling, grammatical, or markup errors, repair broken links, remove their own COI edits, and add independent reliable sources when another editor has requested them . If another editor objects for any reason, it is not an uncontroversial edit. An unsourced defamatory line about a living person is the one thing you never queue for six months: take it out, say plainly why in the edit summary, and raise it at the biographies noticeboard. What happens next, and what the codes mean Then you wait, and there's no queue position to check. Wikipedia states it plainly: it can take anywhere from a day to several months for an edit request to be acted upon . No service level, no expedite, nobody to call. Don't edit the article while you wait, beyond the uncontroversial exceptions above , because doing it yourself is the thing the whole process exists to avoid. A volunteer with no connection to the subject reviews it and marks the result: A accepted, P partially done, U under review, D declined , or G, which means you may go ahead and make the change yourself . G is the only clean permission to touch the article text, and it covers that one request , not the article generally. A decline carries a reason, and the reason is the instruction: ADV for promotional tone, V for changes not supported by neutral independent reliable sources, O for an omission that unbalances the article, R for removing well-sourced content, S for a request that wasn't specific enough, T for a change that wouldn't improve the article. Fix that exact thing and file once more with better sourcing. Refiling the same request unchanged reads as tendentious and puts a topic ban on the table. Don't go looking for a corrections desk while you wait, because there isn't one. Wikipedia's own page for article subjects says it in one line: Wikipedia articles are maintained by volunteer editors; there is no centralised review system . It gives no email address for getting an article fixed and routes you back to the Talk page and the same template. If it's still wrong after six months Six months of silence is a decline , in the words of the instructions: if nobody responds to your request even after six months, treat it the same as a declined request. Everything after that is on-wiki and public, so decide what you're willing to have discussed in the open before you escalate. If the article is about a living person, the biographies noticeboard is the strongest lever you have. Post at the BLP noticeboard and follow its instruction exactly: do not copy and paste defamatory material here; instead, link to a diff showing the problem . Contentious material about a living person that's unsourced or poorly sourced is supposed to be removed immediately, which is why that board moves when an ordinary request doesn't. For procedural help, the Teahouse has an Ask a question button and answers new editors who can't work out why a request stalled. Know what the conflict of interest noticeboard is before you go near it : it exists to determine whether a specific editor has a conflict of interest, so it's also where an agency pushing too hard gets reported. What this doesn't fix If the independent published sources say the unflattering thing, no procedure on Wikipedia changes the article. It reports what those sources report, and a request to take out well-sourced content gets declined under the code for exactly that. The work that moves the article is the work that changes the source record first, and that's a different job in a different place. This is the route for an article that already exists. If there's no article yet, that's Articles for creation and a different process, and you can't review your own submission there or anywhere else. It's also English Wikipedia only : other language editions set their own paid-disclosure policies under the same Terms of Use, so a German or French article is its own project with its own rules. Nobody sells access. There's no paid tier, no expedite and no relationship that moves a request up the list. What you can buy is somebody who does the sourcing, writes the request so a volunteer can act on it in one pass, and files the disclosure correctly the first time. That changes the outcome. It doesn't change the queue. On this page Register an account in your own name Disclose before you write a word Write the change out first Post it on the article's Talk page What happens next, and what the codes mean If it's still wrong after six months What this doesn't fix Written by Drew Chapin → Updated 2026-09-08 Rather not do this yourself? Wikipedia Page Creation → The request is free. Getting it accepted is the work. File it yourself today, because it costs nothing and the disclosure has to be in a real person's name either way. When the article is wrong in a way that's costing you and you'd rather hand the whole thing over, our Wikipedia Page Creation and Citations service is $399 for work on an existing article: we do the sourcing, write the request in the format reviewers act on, disclose the engagement properly, and answer the reviewers when they come back . Have us do it. Everything above, filed for you, chased for you, and reported back. One flat fee. See the service → Every guide we publish is free and ungated. Browse all of them , see what we do and what it costs , or read why we built this company . Written by Drew Chapin , who ran all of this on his own name first. © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## I've spent my career making things discoverable.
URL: https://discoverability.co/meet-drew-chapin/

Meet the founder I've spent my career making things discoverable. Two decades of getting good work found I studied business administration at Vermont State University , started my career at Microsoft on the sales and marketing program, and spent the rest of it on early teams: Feathr , where I was the first business hire, Birthday.App , and Jomboy Media , where I ran e-commerce and business as a Twitter account became a media company. Some went well. Some did not. Every one of them taught me the same set of things: positioning, audience, message, distribution, and the systems that turn interest into action. That became a full-stack go-to-market skillset. All of it was about making something findable and making it make sense to the person who found it. I run this firm out of Philadelphia , and I write and speak publicly about startup failure and the cost of “fake it till you make it.” Then my own name became the problem I co-founded an advertising technology company, and it failed publicly . Bankruptcy and legal fallout turned the worst chapter of my life into the first result under my name. It was not one article. It was close to two hundred news stories , plus the press releases, the aggregators that copy them, the legal databases, the industry blogs, and the search results that assembled themselves out of all of it. A footprint that size does not fade. It compounds, and it arrives ahead of you in every meeting, every introduction, and every time somebody looks you up before deciding whether to take your call. So I rebuilt it, and the rebuild was slow and unglamorous. Removal requests. New pages. Sources earned back one at a time, over months, with no guide and nobody to call . Everything I now do for clients as reputation management, I ran on my own name first. It worked, and it was humbling. It is also why I do not oversell what this work can do. I know exactly which parts move and which parts you learn to live with , because I found out the expensive way. Now I do it for people carrying what I carried I built this firm for people who know what it feels like to be flattened into a search result . Founders, executives, and people whose worst stretch is still the first thing a stranger reads about them. We also serve businesses , and that part is just as personal to me. I grew up in a small business household in Connecticut, so I watched up close what it costs when the phone does not ring and nobody can tell you why. And I spent my career in startups, which means I know the cold start : you have built something real, and not one person on earth is searching for your name yet. Those are the same problem wearing different clothes. Somebody cannot find you, or what they find is not you. How I work I touch every project. The person shaping your plan is the person answering your email. We keep client situations confidential, anonymize every case study, and do the work in-house rather than reselling somebody else's dashboard. It is the same reason I put the guides up for free . A lot of this work can be done at low cost or no cost , and when I needed it I could not get a straight answer out of anybody. So the guides say what to send, where to send it, and when it will not work. If reading one saves somebody from hiring us, good. I will also tell you no. Some results are accurate, fairly sourced, and staying. Some situations need a lawyer, not me. If there is nothing in your search results worth your money, I will say exactly that, because I remember being sold to instead of being told the truth. Drew Chapin Founding Partner, The Discoverability Company Connect on LinkedIn → drewchapin.com → Biography.wiki profile → drew@discoverability.co → Get in touch When you reach out to The Discoverability Company, you get the human touch: Drew, and people with similar lived experience . Not a bot, not a script, and not a ticket queue. Whoever answers has either done this work on their own name or spent years doing it on somebody else's. You get a straight read on your situation before you spend a dollar, including the parts we would not be able to move and the parts you could handle yourself with one of the guides . If the honest answer is that your results are already fine, that is what you will hear. Start the conversation. Tell us what you are up against and we will tell you what can move, what cannot, and what it would take. No charge for that, and no obligation after it. Let’s talk → © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

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URL: https://discoverability.co/message-received/

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URL: https://discoverability.co/order-confirmed/

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## Pricing
URL: https://discoverability.co/pricing/

Pricing One-time projects, placement fees, and ongoing services. Each is priced for the work involved. Ad Management → Clear pricing: $400/month or 10% of ad spend Whichever is higher. Ad spend is separate. Content Removal → Depending on the publication, most can be removed or de-indexed between $499 and $1,999 Priced per page, by the route the host site actually allows. Court Record Removal → $199 one time One flat fee, every aggregator we can reach, twelve months of chasing. Local SEO → Quoted for your situation Based on your locations, service area, and competition. Monitoring → Quoted depending on frequency and platforms Set by how often we check and how many surfaces and competitors you want watched. Personal Information Removal → $399 one time Includes 12 months of monitoring and maintenance. Personal Reputation Management → Clear and transparent pricing: $2,488, one time Standard personal package. Monitoring included indefinitely. Podcast Growth → $49 per month Through Poddisco. Press Placements → $499 to $5,999 per placement Priced by publication tier. SEO and AI Optimization → Quoted for your situation Scoped on the searches, the pages, and the platforms in play. Website Design and Development → Clear pricing: $499 for personal, $699 for business. Starting prices; the final cost depends on the pages and functionality. Wikipedia Page Creation and Citations → $3,500 individual. $5,000 company. Flat per project. Citation work: $399. Special circumstances Some situations don’t fit neatly on a service page. Tell us what you’re up against and we’ll tell you what can move. We don’t need much to get started. A name, a link, or whatever you’ve got. Let’s talk → © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## Privacy Policy
URL: https://discoverability.co/privacy/

Privacy Policy Last updated: March 2026 Information We Collect When you visit our website, schedule a consultation, or use our services, we may collect information you provide directly, such as your name, email address, phone number, and details about your inquiry. We also collect standard technical data through cookies and analytics tools, including your IP address, browser type, pages visited, and referring URLs. How We Use Your Information We use the information we collect to respond to your inquiries, deliver the services you have requested, improve our website and offerings, and communicate with you about updates or opportunities that may be relevant. We do not sell your personal information to third parties. Text Messaging Some of our services send text messages to people who have asked to receive them, including business services operated by The Discoverability Company such as Electrician Philly (electricianphilly.com). You only receive these messages if you provided your mobile number and gave express consent on the relevant sign-up form. No mobile information will be shared with third parties or affiliates for marketing or promotional purposes. We do not sell, rent, or share mobile phone numbers or SMS consent with any third party for their own marketing. Mobile numbers are used only to send the messages you signed up for and to handle your replies. Message frequency varies. Message and data rates may apply. Reply STOP to any message to cancel, or HELP for help. Opting out of text messages does not affect any other service. Cookies and Analytics Our website uses cookies and third-party analytics services to understand how visitors interact with our pages. These tools help us measure traffic, identify popular content, and improve the user experience. You can manage your cookie preferences through your browser settings. Third-Party Services We may use third-party tools for analytics, scheduling, payment processing, and communication. These services operate under their own privacy policies. We select partners who maintain strong data protection practices, but we encourage you to review their policies independently. Data Retention We retain personal information for as long as necessary to provide our services and comply with legal obligations. If you would like your information removed from our systems, please contact us directly and we will process your request promptly. Your Rights Depending on your jurisdiction, you may have the right to access, correct, or delete the personal information we hold about you. You may also have the right to object to certain processing activities or request data portability. To exercise any of these rights, please reach out to us at the address below. Contact If you have questions about this privacy policy or how we handle your data, please contact us at team@discoverability.co . Special circumstances Some situations don’t fit neatly on a service page. Tell us what you’re up against and we’ll tell you what can move. Privacy → Terms → We don’t need much to get started. A name, a link, or whatever you’ve got. Let’s talk → © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## What We Do
URL: https://discoverability.co/services/

What We Do Ad Management → Google Ads and Meta, run for you. Competitive research, creative production, constant testing, and a dedicated check-in on your account two to three times a week. Content Removal → Old articles, aggregator pages, and posts that should have come down years ago. We file the requests, chase the copies, and build accurate pages to take the spot of whatever stays. Court Record Removal → One flat fee covering every legal aggregator we can reach, with twelve months of re-submission and chasing until we have de-indexed everything that can be de-indexed. Local SEO → Show up in the map pack when somebody nearby searches for what you sell. Profile, listings, location pages, and a steady process for earning the reviews that decide it. Monitoring → One picture of everywhere you show up: Google, Bing, Brave, social, Wikipedia, and what ChatGPT and Claude say about you. Your competitors watched on the same measures. Personal Information Removal → Your address, phone number, and relatives, sitting on people-search sites. We find every listing, file the opt-outs, and watch for a year. A one-time alternative to a subscription. Personal Reputation Management → The whole first two pages as one job: assessment, your website, profiles, court record and personal information removal, and the ongoing work after. Podcast Growth → Episode pages, transcripts, and written content that put your back catalog to work in search and AI. Sold through poddisco, the service we built for exactly this. Press Placements → A real story taken to the desks that already cover your subject and worked through their editorial process. If we cannot place it, you do not pay for it. SEO and AI Optimization → On-page work that makes your pages the front-and-center answer, plus the off-page references that cement you as the authority in your field. Measured against a day-one baseline. Website Design and Development → Pixel-perfect, technically clean websites for people and businesses, with on-page SEO built in and one target search term owned per page. Wikipedia Page Creation and Citations → Notability research first, then a sourced draft submitted through the proper review process. Refunded if the research says you do not qualify. Not sure where to start? Show us what people find now. We can help you decide what needs attention. See pricing → Examples of our work → We don’t need much to get started. A name, a link, or whatever you’ve got. Let’s talk → © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## Ad Management
URL: https://discoverability.co/services/ad-management/

What We Do Ad Management Running Google Ads and Meta is a part-time job nobody has time for, and the platforms change the rules constantly. We take the whole thing off your desk : the competitive research, the campaigns, the creative, and the testing. You get a plan you understand and an account somebody is actually watching . Work area What we do What you get Plan We evaluate your current campaigns against your competitors and where digital advertising is heading, then build a complete plan of action: the immediate changes, and a 6 to 18 month roadmap for how the account should evolve. A written plan covering what we change in week one and where the account is going over the next 6 to 18 months. Manage We run the day to day across Google Ads and Meta : budgets, bids, audiences, and testing. We produce the creative too , so you are not the one writing ad copy or cutting images at nine at night. New ads and creative in rotation, and a dedicated check-in on your account two to three times a week , so you never have to remember to look. Refine We read the search terms every week and cut the money going to people who were never going to buy from you . Then we put it back into what is working. A tighter account every month , with wasted spend moved to the campaigns bringing in real customers. Report Once a month we tell you what we spent, what it brought in, and what we changed, in plain language and without the acronyms . A monthly report you can read in five minutes , and a person who answers when you have a question about it. Examples of our ad campaign management success Same orders, half the ad spend. → A Shopify household-cleaning brand had run Google Ads through an outside agency since 2017, quietly losing money. We took the account over and cut media spend 54% at the same monthly order volume, with cost per completed order 2.1x better . Read a recent e-commerce case study → From nearly-invisible to #1 in their market. → A local business almost nobody could find online. We rebuilt the site, corrected the listings, and put paid and organic to work together until they owned the map pack for their market, ahead of competitors who had been advertising against them for years. Read a recent small business case study → Questions we get about managing Google and Meta ads What does ad management cost? $400 per month or 10% of spend, whichever is higher. That covers the campaign work itself. Your ad budget is separate and is paid straight to Google or Meta, never to us, so you can see exactly what went to media and what went to management. Do you run Google Ads and Meta, or just one? Both, and usually together. We run the day to day across Google Ads and Meta : budgets, bids, audiences, creative, and testing. Which one carries more of your budget is a decision we make from your numbers, not a package you pick up front. Do I keep my ad accounts? Yes. The accounts stay in your name and you keep full access to them the entire time. If you stop working with us, nothing has to be rebuilt and nothing has to be handed back, because it was never ours to hold. Access is not a bargaining chip and we have never understood agencies that treat it as one. The same goes for the historical performance data sitting inside them. How long before the numbers move? The first month is mostly cutting waste, and that part shows up fast. We read the search terms every week and cut the money going to people who were never going to buy from you. Real performance change is usually visible inside two to three months once there is enough data to test on. Anyone quoting you a date instead of a range has not looked at your account. Clear pricing: $400/month or 10% of ad spend The management fee is $400 per month or 10% of spend, whichever is higher per month or 10% of spend , whichever is higher. Advertising spend is separate. Your advertising budget goes straight to Google and Meta . You set it, it stays yours, and it is not part of what you pay us. Billed monthly, no long-term contract . You can stop any month. If you are already running ads, we can take over the account you have. You keep ownership of it either way, including the day you leave . Start here. Tell us what you sell and what you are spending now across Google Ads and Meta . We will tell you what we would do differently, and what we would leave alone. No charge for that conversation. Book now → Let’s talk → © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## Content Removal
URL: https://discoverability.co/services/content-removal/

What We Do Content Removal Something inaccurate or unwanted is ranking for your name and it has been there long enough that you have stopped expecting it to move. Most of it has a route. We work out which pages have one, file the requests properly, and build the accurate material that takes the place of whatever stays. Work area What we do What you get Inventory We find the original page and every copy that syndicated off it , and identify who actually controls each one. A list of every affected URL and the route available for each. Requests We document the error or the update and file under each site's own published policy , which is what makes a request work. Supported requests submitted to the people who can act on them. Follow-up We chase the replies, push the pending ones, and re-check the pages after a site says it has acted. You never have to track this. A written status on every URL, so you always know where it stands. Suppression Where a page will not come down, we build the accurate current material that pushes it off the page people actually read . New content built to give the current picture more visibility. Examples of our content removal work Putting a bankruptcy behind you. → Six page-one results , every one an aggregator republishing the same filing rather than six separate stories. We removed four outright and outranked the two that had no route. Six to zero in three months. Read a recent removal case study → The record was expunged. Google didn't care. → An expungement gives you a basis, and a properly documented request is hard for a publisher to ignore. The number one result for her name came down in eight days , with the broker listings worked in parallel. Read a recent expungement case study → Questions we get about getting content removed What does content removal cost? $499 to $1,999 , depending on how many sites carry the content and how hard each one is to reach. You get the number before we start, not after. The range is that wide because one blog post with a responsive owner and a story syndicated to thirty aggregators are genuinely different jobs. We scope it first and quote the number, and if the honest answer is that it cannot come down, we say that instead of quoting anything. You will also know which sites we expect to cooperate and which ones we do not. Can you get anything taken down? Usually there is a way. Our best path is a real route: an error, an update, a policy the site published itself, or a legal basis, and where one of those exists we say so plainly and use it. Accurate reporting from a legitimate outlet rarely comes down on the merits alone, so from there we work our relationships with publishers, platforms, and aggregators alongside a number of proprietary methods to get content de-indexed, suppressed, or removed outright. De-indexing and suppression are not consolation prizes; on a search results page they often look identical to the reader. What we will not do is bill you to chase something we already know is going nowhere, and we will tell you that before you pay us. What about the copies on other sites? This is often the actual job. We find the original page and every copy that syndicated off it , then identify who controls each one. Removing the original and leaving twelve aggregator copies changes nothing in search. We work the copies in the order that changes your search results, not in the order they were published. What if the site says no? We chase the replies, push the pending ones, and re-check after a site claims it has acted. Where removal fails, de-indexing and suppression are often still available, and we will tell you which of the three you are actually looking at. That order is usually not the order you would guess from looking at the list. Depending on the publication, most can be removed or de-indexed between $499 and $1,999 $499 to $1,999 per page , set by what the host site's own policy allows and how many copies syndicated off the original. We check the policy and tell you what is realistic before we take payment . If there is no route, we say so rather than charging you to find out. Where a page will not come down, suppression is quoted separately, because building the content that outranks it is a different job from filing a request. Start here. Send us the URLs, however many there are. We check what each site's policy actually allows and tell you which ones have a route, before you pay anything at all. If none of them do, that is the answer and it costs you nothing. Let’s talk → © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## Court Record Removal
URL: https://discoverability.co/services/court-record-removal/

What We Do Court Record Removal Your case closed, and the legal aggregators kept the copy anyway. They scrape public dockets, they rank for your name, and they do not take it down because you asked nicely. One flat fee covers every aggregator we can reach , not one site at a time, and we tell you honestly what this does and does not change. Work area What we do What you get Find We locate every aggregator page carrying your case and identify which request route each one actually honors. A list of every database and case URL we found. Document We build the request around your case status and any dismissal, sealing, or expungement paperwork, because documentation is what makes these work . A request package matched to your actual circumstances. Submit We pursue removal or de-indexing through every aggregator's process, then keep re-submitting and chasing for twelve months . These sites ignore first requests, change their forms, and republish records under new URLs, so one round of filing is not the job. Twelve months of re-submission and follow-up , until we have de-indexed everything that can be de-indexed. Report We re-check the affected URLs and tell you what changed and what did not. This does not alter the court's own record , and it is not an expungement. A written account of every result, updated across the twelve months as more of it comes down. Examples of our court record removal work The record was expunged. Google didn't care. → The court cleared her case years earlier and the article about the arrest was still the number one result for her name . It came down eight days after first contact, and 0 of 281 court-aggregator records we checked were still hers. Read a recent expungement case study → Reclaiming your life after a federal case. → A federal case, fully served, still owning page one. We removed the aggregator copies where a route existed and built accurate material for the rest. Nine negative results to zero in six months. Read a recent justice-impacted case study → Questions we get about removing court records How much does court record removal cost? $199, one flat fee. That covers every legal aggregator we can reach for your case, plus twelve months of re-submission and chasing . There is no per-site charge and no monthly bill. Aggregators are handled as a set rather than priced individually, because a case that sits on nine of them is one problem, not nine. If your case turns out to be on a single site, the fee is the same and the work is simply shorter. Can you remove the record from the court itself? No, and nobody can. The court's own docket is a public record and only a judge can seal or expunge it. What we go after are the private aggregators that copy that docket and rank for your name, which is what people actually find. That distinction is the one most people have backwards. Those copies are what a search for your name actually returns. What if my case was dismissed, sealed, or expunged? That makes the request much stronger and you should tell us up front. We build the request around your case status and any dismissal, sealing, or expungement paperwork, because documentation is what gets these approved rather than a polite email. Send it over even if you think it is irrelevant. What happens if a site puts the record back up? We keep going for twelve months. Aggregators re-scrape, and a page that came down in March can reappear in July under a slightly different URL. Re-submission is included in the flat fee rather than billed again. If a page reappears after the twelve months, tell us and we will look at it before quoting you for anything. $199 one time $199, one time. One fee covers every legal aggregator we can reach , not one site at a time, and it includes twelve months of re-submission and monitoring. Aggregators republish. A record that comes down in March is often back in September under a different URL, which is why the twelve months is part of the fee rather than an upsell. This addresses the copies sitting on third-party sites. It does not seal, expunge, or change the court's own record , and any service telling you otherwise is selling you something it cannot deliver. Start here. Send us your name or a link to one of the listings. We will tell you how many copies are out there before you spend anything. Book now → Let’s talk → © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## Local SEO
URL: https://discoverability.co/services/local-seo/

What We Do Local SEO Most local searches end within a few miles of where they started. We get your business into the map pack, fix the listings that decide who ranks there, and build the pages that win the towns you actually serve. Work area What we do What you get Profile Claim and complete your Google Business Profile: categories, service areas, hours, photos, and the details that decide local rank. A profile built to rank, more than to exist. Listings Correct your name, address, and phone number everywhere they appear, and kill the duplicate listings splitting your signal. One consistent record across the directories Google checks. Pages Build the service and location pages that answer what people in your area are typing. Pages that rank for the towns you actually serve. Reviews Set up a steady process for earning reviews and responding to the ones you get. A review profile that keeps pace with your competitors. Examples of our local SEO success From nearly-invisible to #1 in their market. → A Florida clinic with two busy locations was drawing about 5,000 impressions a month and fewer than 50 clicks . We rebuilt the site around how search reads a local business, city by city. Ten weeks later: 533 clicks and #1 in both cities . Read a recent small business case study → A new business, discoverable from day one. → This one came to us before launch , so we built the site, the profiles, and the source material while the name was still private. Brand search was owned on day one, instead of being filled in by directories and scrapers. Read a recent new business case study → Questions we get about local SEO What does local SEO cost? Quoted for your situation. It depends on how many locations you have and how bad the listing mess is, and both of those are things we can see before quoting. A single location with a clean profile is a much shorter job than four locations with duplicate listings and three different phone numbers on record. We look at what is actually there before we give you a number, and the look costs nothing. What is the map pack and why does it matter? It is the three-business block with the map that sits above the normal results when somebody nearby searches for what you sell. For a local business it takes most of the clicks, and being fourth is closer to being invisible than to being third. Being invisible there is the single most expensive thing on this page. Why do duplicate listings matter? Because they split your signal. The same business listed twice with two phone numbers competes with itself, and the reviews land on whichever copy the customer happened to find. Do I need location pages if I only have one office? Usually yes, and usually for the areas you serve rather than the address you sit at. People search for the town they are in, not the town you are in. Quoted for your situation Quoted for your situation. The scope depends on how many locations you run, how far you travel for a job, and who you are up against in the map pack. One location in a quiet market is a different job from six locations against a national franchise. We price the one you actually have , and we tell you which of your competitors you can actually beat. The profile, the listings, and the location pages are yours to keep . If we stop working together, none of it switches off. Start here. Tell us what you do and the towns you want it in. We will show you where you rank in each one today , and which of your competitors are actually beatable, before you commit to anything. Let’s talk → © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## Monitoring
URL: https://discoverability.co/services/monitoring/

What We Do Monitoring You cannot be everywhere at once, and what is said about you online does not wait for you to check. We watch every surface where your name appears , from Google, Bing, and Brave through social platforms and Wikipedia to what ChatGPT and Claude actually tell people who ask about you. Then we hand you one report you can act on. The point is that you stop checking. Work area What we do What you get Baseline We agree what matters: your names, your brands, your properties, your key people, and the competitors you want watched alongside you . Then we record where all of it stands today. A defined watch list and a starting record for every surface, so every later change has something to be measured against. Watch Search results across Google, Bing, and Brave . Social platforms and community threads. Wikipedia articles and their edit history. Reviews. And what ChatGPT, Claude, and the other assistants say when someone asks about you , which almost nobody is checking and which increasingly decides the first impression. Continuous coverage of every surface on the list, with each change captured and dated. Compare We track your competitors on the same surfaces, so you can see where they are showing up that you are not , what the assistants say about them, and where the gap is closing or opening. A side-by-side picture of you against your market , on the same measures, refreshed every cycle. Review A person decides what is a real problem and what is ordinary movement, so you are not handed a pile of alerts to triage yourself . That judgment is the part software cannot do. A prioritized read on what actually needs attention, and what can safely be ignored. Report Everything lands in one written report you can actually use : what changed, what it means, and what we would do about it. In plain language, on the schedule you pick. A standing profile of your whole online presence , updated every cycle, so you can be confident you are seeing everything being said about you. Examples of what monitoring catches An imposter site, dead in days, not months. → A pixel-for-pixel clone of a pre-IPO company's site, using its real address and a working contact form. It had been live for months before anyone noticed. Once seen, it went from HTTP 200 to 403 in days , and never came back. Read a recent impersonation case study → The name the AI assistants mention most. → You cannot move a number you are not measuring. We scored this client across four assistants on a fixed question panel, which is what made 20% to 42% in a month a fact rather than a feeling. Read a recent AI visibility case study → Questions we get about reputation monitoring What does monitoring cost? Quoted depending on how often you want it and how many surfaces are in scope. It is billed monthly with no long-term contract, and you can stop any month. It is included indefinitely with the personal reputation management package. Most people start weekly and move to daily only around something specific. What exactly do you watch? Search results across Google, Bing, and Brave , social platforms and community threads, Wikipedia articles, and what ChatGPT and Claude say when somebody asks about you. You tell us which names, brands, properties, and people matter, and that list is what gets watched rather than a generic keyword set. Do you watch competitors too? Yes, on the same surfaces, so you can see where they are showing up that you are not . That comparison is usually more actionable than your own numbers in isolation. What happens when something appears? You hear about it from us with what it is, where it sits, and what can be done, rather than a raw alert you have to interpret. Finding it a week early is most of the value. Quoted depending on frequency and platforms Quoted depending on frequency and platforms. Weekly costs more than monthly, and watching six competitors costs more than watching none. You pick the shape of it. It is usually cheaper than people expect. Most of what makes monitoring expensive elsewhere is a dashboard you have to learn and then check yourself. We do the checking and send you the read. Month to month, no long-term contract . Stop any month you want. One exception worth knowing about: Wikipedia is specialized enough that we gave it its own product and its own brand . WikiMonitor watches an article and tells you the day it changes, from $99 a year for one page. Everything else on this page we do ourselves , and Wikipedia is included in that too if you would rather have it all in one report. Start here. Tell us the names, the brands, and the competitors you want watched. We will scope it and quote it , and show you what today looks like across all of it first, so you can see the shape of the report before you buy one. No charge for that, and no obligation after it. Let’s talk → © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## Personal Information Removal
URL: https://discoverability.co/services/personal-information-removal/

What We Do Personal Information Removal Your home address, your phone number, your age, and your relatives' names are sitting on people-search sites right now, and a stranger can pull all of it up in about nine seconds. That is your personally identifiable information, or PII , and it was collected and published without you ever agreeing to it. We find every listing, file the opt-outs for you, and keep watching for a year. 30-day money-back guarantee, no conditions. Work area What we do What you get Find We search the people-search and data broker networks for every listing carrying your details , including the dozens of sites nobody has heard of that quietly feed the ones everybody has. A full inventory of every listing we found , with links, so you can see exactly what is public. Remove We file through each site's own opt-out process and handle the verification steps those sites use to make people give up : the email confirmations, the phone codes, the ID uploads, the forms that break on purpose. Submitted opt-outs across the network, and a record of every confirmation each site required. Escalate Some brokers ignore a first request, bury the form, or route you to a partner site that republishes the same record. We chase those instead of counting them as done. A second and third pass on anything that did not clear, with the route each one actually responded to. Report We go back and check every listing, then tell you plainly what came down and what did not. Nobody can promise every broker , and any service that does is not being straight with you. A written report at day 30 , honest about anything still standing and why. Watch We keep monitoring for a full year, because these sites repost you . A record you removed in March is often back by September under a new URL. Twelve months of monitoring, with your details re-removed when they reappear. Examples of our personal information removal work The record was expunged. Google didn't care. → Behind the headline article sat about nine data broker listings , quietly rebuilding the picture the court had already erased. We worked those in parallel, then checked 281 court-aggregator records and confirmed none of them were hers . Read a recent expungement case study → Reclaiming your life after a federal case. → Broker listings are half of what holds a page one in place. Clearing them alongside the aggregator copies is how nine negative results became zero in six months . Read a recent justice-impacted case study → Questions we get about removing personal information What does personal information removal cost? $399, one time. It comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee with no conditions : nothing to document, nothing to qualify for, no carve-outs. There is no subscription attached to it and nothing renews on its own. Which sites do you cover? The people-search and data broker networks that carry your address, phone number, and relatives, including the ones that republish each other. We find every listing carrying your details rather than working from a fixed list of the well-known names. Will my information come back? Some of it, eventually. Brokers re-acquire records from public sources on their own cycle. Removal is a real result, not a permanent state, which is why some people pair it with monitoring rather than treating one pass as finished. Do I have to hand over more personal data to get it removed? Less than you would think, and we handle the verification steps those sites use to make people give up. You never create accounts on a broker's site or send them a copy of your license. $399 one time $399, one time. That covers the full sweep, the opt-outs, the escalations, the day-30 report, and twelve months of monitoring. If you are already paying DeleteMe, Cloaked, or another privacy subscription , the difference is the billing model: those charge you every year for as long as you want the work to keep happening. This is a one-time fee with the monitoring year included. 30-day money-back guarantee, no conditions. Ask inside 30 days and we refund it. You do not have to document a reason. Start here. Send us your name and the city you live in. We will show you what is already out there before you buy anything. Book now → Let’s talk → © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## Personal Reputation Management
URL: https://discoverability.co/services/personal-orm/

What We Do Personal Reputation Management Your search results are the first thing anyone learns about you, and right now somebody else wrote them. We take the whole first two pages as one job : what is inaccurate, what is exposed, what is missing, and what is buried. One plan, one price, and we tell you up front which parts can move and which cannot. Work area What we do What you get Assess We go through the first two pages result by result and sort them into accurate, unwanted, neutral, and missing. You see exactly what we see. A written result-by-result assessment and the work plan that comes out of it. Build We build your website and clean up the public profiles that explain what you actually do now, so there is something accurate for search to rank . A personal website, plus profiles carrying consistent, current information. Remove We go after what can come down: court records sitting on the legal aggregators , your address and phone number on people-search sites, and old content whose owner will act on a proper request. Court record and personal information removals filed, with a written result on every one. Outrank For whatever will not come down, we build the accurate material and drive real authority to it , because a new profile nobody links to does not move anything. New pages and profiles built, promoted, and ranking where the old results used to sit. Ongoing We keep watching after the work is done. Results move on their own, removed listings come back, and you should not be the one checking . Continuous monitoring and upkeep, included with the package and never billed again. Examples of our personal reputation management work Reclaiming your life after a federal case. → Someone who had served their sentence in full was still being introduced by a search engine as the worst day of their life. Nine negative page-one results to zero in six months. Aggregators removed where eligible, real journalism outranked, never faked. Read a recent justice-impacted case study → Putting a bankruptcy behind you. → A technology founder with six page-one results , all of them aggregators republishing the same filing. Four came down outright and the rest were outranked. Six to zero in three months , and it has held on every check since. Read a recent founder case study → Questions we get about personal reputation management What does personal reputation management cost? $2,488, one time. Not monthly, not a retainer, no hidden fees. A bigger or more complicated situation still gets a real number from us quickly rather than a discovery call and a closed door. What is actually included? The whole first two pages as one job: the assessment, your website, the public profiles, court record and personal information removal, and the ongoing monitoring. It is one price for the outcome rather than a line item per task. Is monitoring included, or extra? Included, and indefinitely , under the one-time fee. Bought on its own it is billed monthly, priced against the surfaces and names being watched, and you can stop any month. What if some of the results are accurate? Then we tell you so before you pay us. Some results are accurate, fairly sourced, and staying exactly where they are. An honest no costs us a sale and saves you a year of paying for something that was never going to work. Clear and transparent pricing: $2,488, one time $2,488, one time. That covers the assessment, the website, the profiles, the court record and personal information removals, the content we build to outrank what stays, and the ongoing work after. Not a retainer and not a subscription. The ongoing monitoring is included indefinitely and is not billed again. A bigger or more complicated situation gets a real quote from us rather than a closed door. Wikipedia work is priced separately. Start here. Send us your name. We will show you the first two pages the way we see them before you decide anything. Book now → Let’s talk → © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## Podcast Growth
URL: https://discoverability.co/services/podcast-growth/

What We Do Podcast Growth Your back catalog is doing nothing for you inside a listening app. Every episode is a conversation somebody is searching for right now, by guest, by topic, by the exact question you spent forty minutes answering. We turn each one into a page the open web can find. We ended up doing so much of this that we built a whole service for it, called poddisco. Work area What we do What you get Pages Every episode gets a real page on the open web , explaining the conversation and pointing the visitor at the show. Individual episode pages that can rank on their own. Transcripts The spoken conversation becomes readable text, which is the only version search and AI can actually read . A full text version of every conversation, published alongside it. Content We write around the guests, subjects, and questions people are already typing, so the catalog keeps working after release week . Episode notes and written content built around real search demand. Questions we get about growing a podcast What does podcast growth cost? $49 per month, sold through poddisco. It is billed monthly and you can stop any month. There is no setup fee and no minimum term, because a catalog either starts working for you or it does not. Why does my show need pages? Because a player is not a search result. Every episode gets a real page on the open web explaining the conversation, which is the version search engines and AI assistants can actually read and cite. Do transcripts really matter? They are the whole mechanism. The spoken conversation becomes readable text, and text is the only version search and AI can read . Without it, an hour of your best material is invisible. Does this help old episodes? That is most of the point. We write around the guests, subjects, and questions people are already typing, so the back catalog keeps working long after release week. $49 per month Podcast growth runs through poddisco , our podcast service. It started as work we were doing for podcast clients here, and there was enough of it to become its own product. $49 per month. Episode pages, transcripts, and the written content around your guests and subjects. Start here. Send us your feed. We will show you what people are already searching for in your back catalog. Go to poddisco → Let’s talk → © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## Press Placements
URL: https://discoverability.co/services/press-placements/

What We Do Press Placements Nobody covers you because you asked. They cover you because there's a story and it landed on the right desk in the right form. We find the story you already have, take it to the outlets that actually cover your subject, and work it through their editorial process. If we can't place it, you don't pay for it. Work area What we do What you get Story We find the development, the evidence, or the expertise that makes you worth covering right now , and we tell you honestly if we can't find one yet. A story angle backed by source material , or a straight answer that the story isn't there yet. Outlets We match it to the trade, regional, and national desks that already cover your subject , rather than blasting a list and hoping. A named shortlist of outlets and the placement scope for each. Outreach We write the pitch, send it, and handle the back and forth with editors through their process, so you are never the one chasing a reporter. A submitted pitch and documented publication decision. Placement We confirm the piece when it runs and record where it published, so you have the link and we have the receipt . The published article URL, and no fee at all if the outlet passes. Examples of our press and launch work A new business, discoverable from day one. → Most companies think about coverage after there is a problem. This one came to us before launch, so the first thing the world found was the story they wanted told , on day one rather than a year in. Read a recent new business case study → The name the AI assistants mention most. → Coverage is not only read by people any more. Building the sources these models draw on took a B2B client from one AI answer in five to the most-mentioned name in its category . Read a recent AI visibility case study → Questions we get about getting press coverage What does a placement cost? $499 to $5,999 per placement , depending on the outlet. If we cannot place the article, you do not pay , which follows from billing per placement rather than per month. Is this a press release blast? No. We match a real story to the trade, regional, and national desks that already cover your subject , then work it through their editorial process. A wire blast reaches nobody who was going to write about you. Do you write the pitch? Yes, and we handle the back and forth with editors, so you are not managing a reporter relationship on top of your day. You approve the story angle before anything goes out. Will this help a Wikipedia page? Almost never, and we will not sell it to you that way. Paid placement fails Wikipedia's independence test by construction, so it cannot become a notability source no matter which outlet it runs in. $499 to $5,999 per placement The publication tier determines the fee: regional and industry outlets sit at the lower end, national titles at the higher end. If we cannot place the article, you do not pay. Start here. Tell us what happened or what you know that others don't. We will tell you if it is a story before we take a dollar. Let’s talk → © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## Review Management
URL: https://discoverability.co/services/review-management/

What We Do Review Management The one-star from somebody who was never a customer. The cluster that appeared the week a competitor opened down the road. Reviews are the last thing anyone reads before deciding, and the fake ones do the most damage . We find them, file them against the policy each platform actually enforces, and build you a steady way to earn real ones. Work area What we do What you get Review We read every review and separate real customer criticism from reviews left by people who were never customers : fake accounts, competitor sabotage, ex-employees, and the copy-paste clusters that all arrive in the same week. A review-by-review assessment naming which ones are actionable and which just need a good answer. File We match each one to the specific platform policy it breaks and submit the evidence: account history, timing patterns, duplicated language, no record of a transaction. A report with evidence gets pulled. A report without one gets ignored. Documented removal requests on every eligible review, and the follow-up when a platform sits on one. Respond For anything that stays up, we draft factual public replies that address the concern without exposing a customer's private information or starting a fight in public. Response drafts for your approval. Nothing posts without you seeing it. Request We find the natural moment in your process to ask every customer for honest feedback, more than the happy ones. Volume of real reviews is what makes a planted one obvious. A defined review-request process your team can run without us, and without gaming anything. Questions we get about business review management Can you remove a bad review? Only where it breaks the platform's own policy: a review from someone who was never a customer, a competitor, or a former employee. Real criticism from a real customer stays up, and we help you answer it instead. We will tell you honestly which of those two a given review is. What does review management cost? Quoted for your situation, because the work depends on how many reviews are in scope and which platforms they sit on. A handful of clearly fake reviews on one platform is a different job from a coordinated campaign across three, and we will tell you which one you have. How do you get one taken down? We match each review to the specific platform policy it breaks and submit the evidence: account history, timing, and pattern. A report that just says the review is unfair gets closed without a human reading it. What about the ones that stay up? We draft factual public replies that address the concern without exposing a customer's private details . A calm, specific reply does more for the next reader than the review does against you. Quoted for your situation Quoted for your situation , based on how many reviews are in question and how many platforms they sit on. A defined project, not a subscription. The platform makes the final call on every removal , so we tell you honestly which reports have the evidence to succeed and which do not. Nothing we build asks customers to filter themselves before reviewing. Everyone gets asked the same way , which is both the rule and the reason it works. Start here. Send us your business name. We will tell you which reviews are actually removable , which ones just need a good answer, and which are not worth your attention at all. Let’s talk → © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## SEO and AI Optimization
URL: https://discoverability.co/services/seo-and-ai-optimization/

What We Do SEO and AI Optimization People find you through Google and they increasingly find you by asking an AI, and those two answers are often nothing alike. We record what both say about you today, fix the site and the sources feeding them , then measure the same questions again so you can see what actually moved. Work area What we do What you get Baseline We record the real search results and the real AI answers for your name, your company, and the questions your customers ask. Before anything changes. A starting record you can hold us to , including every inaccuracy we found. On-page We rebuild your pages and profiles to be the front-and-center answer for the searches that matter to you: the structure, the headings, the internal links, and the technical work that decides whether a page is even eligible to rank. We know what these engines reward , and we build to it rather than guessing at it. Your pages and profiles rebuilt to rank , with the technical blockers cleared and one target search term owned per page. Off-page Ranking is not decided on your own website alone. We build the off-page references that cement you as the authority : the coverage, the citations, the profiles, and the mentions across the sources these engines already trust, all saying the same consistent thing about who you are. Real authority pointing at your pages , and one consistent story about your business everywhere a model or a search engine looks. Measure We run the same searches and the same AI questions again and compare them to the starting record. You see the delta, not a story about it. A report on what changed, what did not, and what we would do next. Examples of our search and AI visibility work The name the AI assistants mention most. → A B2B client appeared in about one AI answer in five . We scored a fixed panel of fifteen buyer questions across four assistants, built the sources these models actually draw on, and took it to 42% and the most-mentioned name in its category . Read a recent AI visibility case study → From nearly-invisible to #1 in their market. → On-page and off-page together on a local business almost nobody could find. 533 clicks from under 50 , 36,753 impressions in ten weeks, and #1 for brand-and-city searches in both of its markets. Read a recent small business case study → Questions we get about SEO and AI search optimization What does this cost? Quoted for your situation, and we get to a number quickly. The work scales with how many terms, pages, and surfaces are in play, so a published flat fee would be a made-up number for most of the people who ask. We look at your current results and tell you what is realistic before quoting, because the honest scope is sometimes smaller than people expect. What does AI optimization actually mean? Making your pages the answer an assistant reaches for, not just a page that ranks. We record the real AI answers for your name, your company, and your customers' questions, then build the on-page and off-page references those answers are drawn from. Both halves matter, and doing only the first is why most of this work stalls. How is this measured? Against a baseline we record before we start: the real search results and the real AI answers, dated. Without that first reading there is no honest way to tell you later what changed. You get the same reading again later, taken the same way, so the comparison actually means something. How long does it take? On-page changes can register in weeks. The off-page references that cement you as the authority take months, because they depend on other people publishing. Anyone promising page one in thirty days is selling you the thirty days. Quoted for your situation Quoted for your situation. The scope depends on how competitive your searches are, what shape your site is in, and how much off-page authority you are starting with. On-page and off-page are one engagement, not two invoices . Rebuilding your pages without building the authority behind them gets you a better-looking site that still does not rank. We report against the baseline we recorded on day one , running the same searches and the same AI questions. You see the delta, not a story about it. Start here. Tell us the searches that matter to your business. We will show you what comes back today , on Google and in the AI answers, before you commit to anything. Let’s talk → © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## Website Design and Development
URL: https://discoverability.co/services/website-development/

What We Do Website Design and Development One of the few constants in online reputation, for people and businesses alike, is that you have to own your own brand . We make that painless: a pixel-perfect site, technically clean from top to bottom, with on-page SEO built to put you on page one for the search term that matters to you. Work area What we do What you get Structure We map the pages you actually need and pick the search term each one should own , so the site is built around how people look for you. A page plan with one target search term per page , agreed before anyone writes a line of code. Content We write the pages: who you are, what you do, and how to reach you, in language a real person will read . Finished copy, headings, and page titles , written for people first and search engines second. Build We build it pixel-perfect and technically clean from top to bottom: fast pages, correct markup, and on-page SEO done properly rather than bolted on afterward. A responsive site that loads fast and is positioned to rank on page one for your target term. Launch We redirect your old addresses, check every link and contact path, and submit the site so search engines index it quickly . A live site with nothing broken , and none of the search history you already built thrown away. Examples of our website design and development work Sam Mangel → A legal professional whose clients arrive at the worst week of their lives. Calm, plain, and fast , built so the questions they show up with are already answered on the page. Visit the site → Booked, Blonde & Busy → Olivia Ponton's book podcast. A hand-lettered wordmark and an editorial serif carry the identity, and every episode is built as a page that search and AI can actually read. Visit the site → ListenerReader → Our own publication: this week in podcasts . Built to browse a huge number of shows without getting lost, and to put listeners onto something new. It runs on the poddisco engine. Visit the site → Questions we get about building websites What does a website cost? $499 for personal and $699 for business. Flat and scoped, so when the project ends, it ends. There is no monthly fee attached to simply having the site. Do I own the site? Yes, outright, including the domain and the files. It is the one property in your search results that nobody else can change, take down, or reprice, which is most of the reason we build it first. Is SEO included or is that separate? On-page SEO is built in. We map the pages you actually need and pick the search term each one should own , so the site is built to rank rather than retrofitted later. Ongoing off-page work is a separate service. How long does it take? Most builds run a few weeks, and the long pole is usually getting content and approvals back from you rather than the build itself. You will know the schedule before you pay. Clear pricing: $499 for personal, $699 for business. Personal websites start at $499 . Business websites start at $699 . Page count, custom design, and functionality determine the final price. One-time cost. You own the site and the domain when it ships. Most builds run two to three weeks from the day we agree the page plan. Start here. Tell us what the site needs to do and roughly how many pages. We will come back with a price. Book now → Let’s talk → © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## Wikipedia Page Creation and Citations
URL: https://discoverability.co/services/wikipedia/

What We Do Wikipedia Page Creation and Citations Wikipedia is the most important reference page on the internet, and it is the one page you cannot simply buy. The independent sources decide , not us and not you. So we research the coverage first, tell you plainly what it supports, and refund the fee if the answer is no . Work area What we do What you get Research We gather the independent coverage that exists about you and assess honestly whether it clears Wikipedia's bar. This happens before anything is written. A written notability assessment with the source list, and a full refund if it says you do not qualify. Draft We write it the way the encyclopedia is written, tying every factual claim to a source a volunteer editor can check. A sourced draft, in encyclopedic tone, ready to submit. Submit We disclose our paid involvement, submit through the proper review process, and answer the reviewers ourselves . A submitted draft and the full documented review history. Existing pages If there is already an article, we assess corrections and citations against the sourcing rules rather than editing and hoping. A specific proposed edit or citation request, with the sourcing behind it. Questions we get about Wikipedia pages What does a Wikipedia page cost? $3,500 for an individual and $5,000 for a company. Notability research comes first, and if the research says you do not qualify, the fee is refunded . The research is the first thing we do and the only thing we do until it is answered, because everything after it depends on the answer. Can you guarantee the page stays up? No, and be suspicious of anyone who does. Wikipedia is written and reviewed by volunteers who can revisit anything. What we can do is give the article the sourcing and neutrality that make it hold, and disclose our paid involvement so it is not deleted for the wrong reason. Do you disclose that we paid you? Yes, every time. We disclose our paid involvement, submit through the proper review process, and answer the reviewers ourselves. Undisclosed paid editing is the fastest way to get an article deleted and an account blocked. It also protects the article from being challenged later on those grounds. What makes someone notable enough? Significant coverage in independent, reliable sources that are not press releases, paid placements, or your own site. That is the bar the research measures you against, and it is why the answer sometimes comes back no. Trade press, local news, and your own announcements rarely clear it on their own, which is the part most people are surprised by. $3,500 individual. $5,000 company. Page creation is $3,500 for an individual or $5,000 for a company, flat per project. If the article already exists and you need a citation or a link added to it , that is $399 . If our notability research concludes the subject does not qualify, the fee is refunded . Editors decide whether a submitted draft is accepted, and nobody can promise otherwise. Once an article exists, anyone on earth can edit it. WikiMonitor watches it and tells you the day it changes : $99 a year for one page, $399 a year for five, $699 a year for fifteen. It is a separate product on its own site, and you do not need us for anything else to use it. Start here. Send us your name and anything written about you. The research comes first , and it is refundable if it does not go your way. Book now → Let’s talk → © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms

## Building the Future Together
URL: https://discoverability.co/souprema/

PRIVATE PARTNER MATERIALS Building the Future Together The current Souprema vision report, franchise presentation, initial-interest sheet and franchise QR code, corrected through August 31, 2026. Download the report Presentation PDF Initial-interest sheet Franchise QR code 34-page shareable report · 25-slide presentation · Updated August 31, 2026 Private material for Souprema partners and advisors. Please do not redistribute.

## Terms of Service
URL: https://discoverability.co/terms/

Terms of Service Last updated: March 2026 Agreement to Terms By accessing or using the website and services provided by The Discoverability Company, you agree to be bound by these terms of service. If you do not agree to these terms, you should not use our website or engage our services. Services The Discoverability Company provides digital reputation management, search engine optimization, content strategy, and related consulting services. The specific scope, deliverables, and timeline for any engagement are defined in the service agreement provided to each client prior to the start of work. Client Responsibilities Clients are expected to provide accurate and complete information necessary for the delivery of services. Delays or inaccuracies in the information provided may affect timelines and outcomes. Clients are also responsible for reviewing and approving deliverables in a timely manner. Payment Terms Payment terms, including pricing, billing frequency, and accepted methods, are outlined in your service agreement. Fees are non-refundable except where a published guarantee or your service agreement says otherwise. Late payments may result in suspension of services until the balance is resolved. Published guarantees Where we publish a guarantee on a service page, that guarantee is part of these terms and it governs. Personal information removal carries a 30-day money-back guarantee with no conditions: ask within 30 days of your order and we refund it, and you do not have to document a reason. Wikipedia page work is refunded in full if our notability research concludes the subject does not qualify. Press placements are billed per placement, so if we cannot place the article, you do not pay for it. Intellectual Property All content, strategies, and materials created by The Discoverability Company on behalf of a client become the property of the client upon full payment. Our proprietary tools, processes, and methodologies remain the intellectual property of The Discoverability Company. Limitation of Liability While we make every effort to deliver effective results, we cannot guarantee specific search engine rankings, review outcomes, or platform decisions, as these are controlled by third parties. Our liability is limited to the fees paid for the specific services in question. Termination Either party may terminate an engagement as outlined in the service agreement. Upon termination, any outstanding fees become immediately due. We will provide reasonable transition support and deliver any completed work product. Governing Law These terms are governed by the laws of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Any disputes arising under these terms will be resolved in the courts located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Contact For questions about these terms, please contact us at team@discoverability.co . Special circumstances Some situations don’t fit neatly on a service page. Tell us what you’re up against and we’ll tell you what can move. Privacy → Terms → We don’t need much to get started. A name, a link, or whatever you’ve got. Let’s talk → © The Discoverability Company Privacy Terms