Learn how to address negative search results and identify which links can be removed or hidden effectively.
This post was sponsored by Erase. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own.
Say a client sends you five links. There’s a Google review, a Yelp review, a republished court record, a Reddit thread, and a local news story. Which ones can come down?
Going by our 2026 data, an eligible Google review and a republished court record usually can. The Yelp review, the Reddit thread, and the news story are more difficult.
Negative content can also appear in AI-generated answers. Our May analysis for SEJ found AI Overviews showing negative reviews in searches that didn’t ask for them. That makes it useful to know which sources are likely to remove content and which require a different approach.
We looked at 22,620 links clients sent to Erase.com between January 1 and September 21, 2026. They came from about 1,650 websites, and the results split sharply by site.
In this analysis, a successful removal could mean taking a page down, de-indexing it, or removing the client’s name or photo. De-indexing keeps a page out of Google’s search results without taking it offline.
Google reviews made up about half of the links in the category breakdown. That breakdown excludes the image-heavy case described in the methodology.
More than 1,000 websites showed up only once in the data. News links alone came from 708 different outlets, each with its own editors and rules.
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