Search Results Monitoring

(Last Updated: Wedesday, August 3, 2022)

Effectively safeguarding your online reputation is an ongoing process. Once the firm has accomplished the task of purging certain content from the World Wide Web, it becomes crucial for you (or us) to continue monitoring Google for any potential negative articles, images, or videos that may be uploaded in the future.

Goodman & Baxter has methods and strategies already in place for us to accomplish this important process for our clients for a nominal monthly fee. But the work is not brain‑surgery or rocket‑science by any stretch and requires no special skills or postgraduate studies. It simply requires a dogged commitment from anyone who chooses to do it on their own.

That means checking Google (and perhaps even Bing and Yahoo!) on a daily basis, at minimum. After all, the sooner negative content is identified, the quicker it can be purged and the possible damage minimized.

Of course, every client is different.

For the school‑teacher who hired us to negotiate a settlement with a mugshot publisher to have her arrest details deleted and who never has had another scrape with the law, there would not be such a great need for ongoing search engine results monitoring.

On the other hand and for one example, the need for reliable and ongoing search engine results monitoring would be imperative for a sitting Circuit Court judge who writes opinions in highly controversial cases on a daily basis. That is because there seemingly is a never‑ending list of social media platforms for either disgruntled litigants or simply members of the public at‑large to publish highly embarrassing and personally sensitive content about that judge if they disagree with one of his Orders.

As evidence, one need look no further than the avalanche of details about U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and his family that was published following the leak of a draft opinion in the recent Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization case. Within minutes of the leak, there were hoardes of angry protestors en route to march up and down the sidewalks in front of Kavanugh's home on an otherwise quiet street in the tony Chevy Chase suburb of Washington, D.C.

The search engines, by and large, have established common‑sense regulations that they believe fall within the spirit of both the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the laws that each individual state has codified with regard to stalking, revenge porn, exploitation of minors, and other forms of electronic harassment. So it might be best to contact Google directly rather than hire us if you believe certain content violates a current statute in your home state. Goodman & Baxter always will advise potential clients if we believe reaching out to Google would be more effective than retaining our services.

It also is important to keep in mind that Google always complies with Orders handed down from Courts of competent jurisdiction. So if you have received an injunction enjoining certain speech (whether temporary or permanent), you or your legal counsel can forward the Order to Google and can expect compliance from Google in a fairly expeditious manner.

But publishers in the United States typically are granted a wide berth with regard to freedom to display any document that has been released as part of a government public record. This includes police reports, virtually all filings in both criminal and civil case proceedings, traffic citations, papers related to the sale and transfer of real estate, and marriage records. Even personal and corporate bankruptcy records are accessible for the public to view, copy, and publish from any federal court in the United States.

Monitoring search results that contain pages bearing your name or the name of your company also provides an effective tool for identifying why certain pages rank higher than others, thereby allowing you to capitalize on and utilize those factors when creating your own content.