A Guide on How to Scrub Your Internet Presence

In this article, we are going to elaborate on why you should care about digital footprints and how to scrub your Internet presence.

Have you ever thought about the scope of your digital footprint and its consequences? Although the posted photos, Tweets, and business publications may seem unimportant, in reality, they shape your online perception. Therefore, regular revisions are a must if you want to maintain a positive online reputation that, with time, will become your valuable asset.

Why Delete Your Internet Presence in the First Place?

Before moving to the point of how to erase your Internet presence, let’s think about why it’s important. Historically, reputation was a matter of word-of-mouth, in which people’s opinions shaped a business’ or individual’s image in the eyes of the masses. Little has changed today, except for the fact that the word is spread online, meaning it has a far wider reach.

Look at Uber’s harassment scandal. The company didn’t just have to fire a minimum of 20 employees, fire the CEO, and provide an average payout of $34,000 for 56 employees. It also faced significant reputation losses because the scandal’s details were covered extensively by the media.

This undermined the ride-sharing company’s image as an employer and, more importantly, as a service provider. Considering that today consumers choose sustainable, socially responsible businesses, the harassment scandal is far more fatal to business revenue than it may seem. With the growing competition in the niche, mindful, mature clients will abandon such a service.

Given that, online reputation management is a tool to prevent risks that may result in business collapse. Knowing how to scrub your Internet presence, be it a company’s or a personal one, allows you to avoid such escalations.

4 Ways How to Erase Your Internet Presence

To clean up your online presence, you don’t need much: just some free time and knowledge, of course. If you have already set aside a couple of hours to delete unwanted digital footprint, devote 10-15 minutes to learn how to scrub your online presence.

Delete the Information From Google’s Cache

Google regularly scans the web and saves webpages in a cache on its servers so that a user can access the latest site’s version even if it’s down. Such archives may also appear in organic search results, even if the information there is outdated. Here is how to delete your online presence from Google’s cache:

• Find the URL you want to remove.
• Visit the specific page to request outdated content removal from Google Search.
• Click on the “New Request” button, enter the URL, and submit.

After that, you will be able to track the state of your request. While Google won’t explain the refusal to remove the URL, it will always notify you.

Delete Unwanted Photos and Videos From Google

If you stumble upon a photo or video that was posted without your consent, you can complain to Google, and the image will be hidden from organic search results. Here is a brief step-by-step guide:

• In Google’s Help Center, visit the page to remove personal information from the Search Engine.
• Choose the link in the “Personal information that Google will remove” to delete images.
• Fill in the form by providing your full name, country of residence, email, URL, and an example of the URL that appeared in search results.
• Provide the screenshots with images to be removed from organic search results (you can hide the sensitive content by blurring).

Delete the Information From Third-Party Sites

The above-mentioned methods don’t remove online presence forever: the content is merely deleted from Google Search, which means that any user with a direct link can see it. To forget about harmful publications, you need to deal with the roots or, in other words, third-party websites. Your steps are as follows:

• Reach the admin. Typically, you can find the contacts on the platform.
• Write an email that points out the published confidential or harmful content. Don’t be rude or critical; the admins might have merely missed it.
• If there is no reply for a long time, consider re-sending the email.
• If your request is ignored, turn to a hosting provider. You can find the contacts through Whois. The rest of the procedure is the same as with the admin.

Delete Online Presence From Social Media

With the wide adoption of social media, businesses and individuals are the ones responsible for their digital footprint. The published content isn’t always beneficial to one’s image. Therefore, if you are wondering “how to delete my online presence,” you should probably start with your personal and business social media accounts.

If you want to eliminate your presence completely, don’t merely get rid of your account. Remove your name, date of birth, education-related information, and most importantly, photos and videos.

Don’t forget to check the tagged photos. Hide them, remove the tags, or ask those who published the content to delete it.

Don’t Self-Cure – Delegate the Online Clean-Up to Reputation Practitioners

How to erase your Internet presence quickly and easily? If you choose to do it yourself, that’s hardly the case. Due to lack of experience, you are going to spend hours upon hours to ensure that no online information harms your image. Reputation experts, however, will eagerly take this burden off your shoulders.

We at Reputation America know how to remove your digital footprint without fuss or legal trials – and in the shortest timeframe. This is a safe way to clean up your online image that won’t result in more negative content.

By dealing with us, you are entrusting your reputation to professionals who treat your data carefully. Moreover, we specialize in content removal, which means that it won’t be just hidden from organic search results but deleted forever. If the information reappears, we will delete it again for free, as it’s our mission to keep your online image safe.