What evil accusations lurk in Web’s vast recesses? Google knows
Go Google yourself.
For those not familiar with the practice, start at Google.com and type your name into the search line. The results could surprise or shock you, as it did a caller who will remain anonymous.
The caller found two items that included her name. The caller hadn't known of them until someone brought it to her attention. The links using this person's name led to comments posted on a reviewjournal.com story and another on an e-Forum message board alleging the user's involvement in illegal activities.
Anyone using Google as part of a background check on the user's name could easily find these allegations, which could jeopardize the user's employment.
The user had already talked to another member of my staff who removed the questionable posts. It's our policy not to preview or approve comments in advance. We rely on the online community to help police these forums by alerting us when they see objectionable material. My staff decides to either remove or retain the entire comment. We never edit user's comments.
This was an example of the system at work. Almost.
The user discovered that Google and other search engines retain a copy of each page. A click on the "cached" version of the story on the Google results leads to the original content. This shows a snapshot of the page when the search engine "spiders" last crawled the site for the purpose of indexing.
Google does have a procedure for removing these cached pages. The caller had already initiated the steps, and a check of the Google results showed the "cached" links were gone in less than 24 hours.
The easiest way to initiate the removal is to follow the steps used by the caller. Type "removing content from Google" into the Google search box. This leads to step-by-step directions. You can also start at: (www.google.com/webmasters/tools/removals)
This will only remove the content from the search engine results. You'll need to contact the Webmaster of the site that originally posted the content and request it be removed. A Google spokesman said, via e-mail:
"It's important to bear in mind that search engines do not have the ability to remove content directly from the Internet, so removing content from Google or another search engine would still leave the original content that exists on the Web. Users that want content removed from the Internet should contact the Webmaster of the page or Internet-hosting companies or ISPs hosting the content to find their content-removal policies. Once the content has been removed from the Web site(s) where it appeared and Google has visited the page again and verified the content has been removed, the information will no longer appear in Google search results."
Share your Internet story with me at agibes@reviewjournal.com.
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