When Google makes your past look like your present

Most people who’ve been through something hard want the same thing afterwards: to get on with their lives.

They go back to work, apply for better jobs, start again after a divorce, a court case, a business that failed, a public mistake, an allegation or a family falling-out. It takes years, and it’s mostly quiet work that nobody sees.

Then one night they search their own name and the old story is back on the first page.

Sometimes it’s an old court page or an appeal decision. Sometimes it’s a copy of a public record on a site they’ve never heard of, with a new address and a recent-looking date, so it looks like news.

To everyone else it’s one search result. To the person named, it can feel like being sent back to the worst year of their life.

The case ends. The search result doesn’t.

Plenty of people have already dealt with whatever happened. Some were cleared. Some won an appeal. Some made a mistake years ago and have worked hard since to put it right. Some were never fairly described in the first place.

A search result can’t show any of that. It shows a headline, a couple of lines of text and a date. If the date looks recent, something from ten years ago can read like it happened last month.

That’s the part that feels unfair. The record may be accurate about the day it describes, and still give a stranger the wrong picture of who you are now.

Most of the damage happens quietly

Employers, clients and landlords rarely tell you they searched your name and changed their mind. The interview just doesn’t go anywhere, or the deal goes cold, or a new friend gets a bit distant.

When it does come up, you’re explaining yourself to someone who has already formed a view from a few lines on a screen.

A stranger looks at the result for a few seconds. The person named can live with it for years.

Old information can be made to look new

Court decisions, tribunal pages and public records can lawfully be online. That’s a separate question.

The problem is that some sites copy old material, put it on a new page with your full name in the title, and Google treats it as a fresh page. The outcome of the case might be missing. The details might be wrong. The page might be a copy of a copy.

Google doesn’t read the whole story. It ranks pages, and sometimes the page that ranks best is the one that’s least fair to you.

A name isn’t clickbait

Someone’s worst day shouldn’t keep being recycled for clicks. Their family shouldn’t keep stumbling across it, and an employer shouldn’t meet the old version before the real person in front of them.

That doesn’t mean every record can come down. Some records are meant to stay public, and Google can’t be made to forget everything. Anyone who promises otherwise isn’t being straight with you.

But you shouldn’t have to work it out on your own, either.

What to check first

If an old record, court page, review, article or copied profile is showing for your name, start by writing down exactly what’s there. Keep a note of:

• what shows up when you search your name
• the exact link and page title
• the short description Google shows under it
• the date Google shows, if any
• when the events actually happened
• whether the page is a copy of something else, or leaves out the outcome
• whether the site has a way to ask for a correction or removal
• whether one of Google’s own forms might apply, for example for an outdated result

With that in hand, you can work out what to ask for. It might be a correction from the site, an update to an old article, a request to Google to refresh an out-of-date result, a privacy complaint, or advice from a lawyer if it’s defamatory or a case is still running.

Which one fits depends on the facts.

Why we built this

Fix My Name Online exists because people get judged by a search result before they get the chance to explain, and because most people don’t know where to start.

We can’t erase the past, and we won’t pretend to. What we can do is show you the steps that are open to you, give you letters you can edit, and point you to the official forms. You stay in charge and send everything yourself.

If old records, court pages, reviews, articles or copied profiles are coming up for your name, start with the free check. It runs in your browser, and nothing you type is sent to us.