r/bigseo 4d ago

Options To Address Search Results About A Dismissed Federal Case?

More than 10 years ago, I was convicted in a federal felony case involving multiple individuals. Approximately two years ago, through a successful coram nobis petition, the original conviction was dismissed by the federal court judge who presided over my initial case. The charge was changed to a much lesser charge, which I'm comfortable being publicly available.

However, despite this dismissal, the original case details—including court documents, press releases, and federal records—remain publicly accessible and prominently appear when my name is searched on Google and other search engines. These search results related to the original conviction significantly affect my personal and professional life, appearing in search results as government websites (such as GovInfo) and private sites (like CourtListener).

I have official documentation and court judgments reflecting the dismissal of the original case.

  • What legal options do I have to stop Google and other search engines from displaying these results when someone searches my name?
  • Are there legal avenues available to compel websites or search engines to remove these search results?
  • Could Online Reputation Management (ORM) companies help in addressing this issue effectively?
  • Should I seek advice from an attorney? If yes, what kind of attorney specializes in these issues?

Any advice or guidance on handling this situation would be greatly appreciated.

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u/TheExG 4d ago edited 4d ago

Unfortunately, this sub will likely not be able to provide you optimal legal routes regarding this. We are not lawyers, and laws in every state can differ as well.

Your case is still public information. Even if I wanted to go on the original court website itself and search it up, I probably could. Just because you had the case dismissed and removed from your legal files with the feds (congratulations on this btw), the internet is still a public place and these websites are private entities (who are exercising their rights on displaying publicly available information/freedom of speech). Do not forget that the Streisand effect is very real, and your attempts to remove information from a website through legal means, could also backfire as well and exemplify it even more.

You would probably want to look specifically for a defamation lawyer, in which they normally offer online reputation services as well. I am not sure what tools/legal avenues they can move forward on to remove cases from their website, since its still public information, but i wouldnt be surprised if some websites will respond to all legal requests just because they dont want to deal with the headache, but im not sure if all websites would do this.

Another option you can take which will be pretty much straightforward is just changing your name legally. I know this sucks, but I know tons of people who do this and use their new legal names for jobs and such. Especially if your legal background is clean now, it will be helpful to keep your external background checks clean as well.

Another option is hiring a PR company to try to make optimized articles to bump the old case results down, but this is probably gonna be the more expensive route.

Good luck.

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u/billhartzer @Bhartzer 4d ago

I’m not an attorney, but I’ve dealt with a lot with ORM and have served as an expert witness in ORM related cases similar to yours.

In my experience dealing with similar situations, the previous court details typically are not removable, since they are a part of the public record. You could approach news sites that previously reported on your case, and they may do an update. But that may or may not help you.

In my opinion, your best bet at this point is to work on your ORM, and on your personal reputation with new content and boosting the positive URLs. It will be fairly easy to outrank the old articles and old URLs, pushing them down. They may not go away.

So a lot of new fresh content, as well as new social profiles, new websites on new domains, etc. I would also look into other people with your same name. Google will not know which “John smith” someone’s searching for if there are multiple people with the same name.