How to Fix Your Google Search Results in Australia

If you've ever Googled yourself and seen something you wish wasn't there, you already know how this feels. An old news article, a negative review, an unflattering photo from a Facebook post in 2014. Once it's on page one of Google, it follows you into every job interview, every client meeting, every first impression.

The good news: you can fix it. The bad news: you can't just delete it.

This guide walks you through how to actually clean up your Google results in Australia, what works, what doesn't, and how long it takes.

Why you can't just remove Google results

Google doesn't own most of the content it shows. If a news site publishes an article about you, Google is just the librarian pointing people to it. The article lives on the news site's server. Google can't remove it without the publisher's permission.

You have three options if you want something gone:

1. Contact the publisher and ask them to remove or update it. Works sometimes. Costs nothing. Often fails.
2. Legal action if the content is defamatory under Australian law. Expensive. Slow. Risky.
3. Push it off page one using reverse SEO. This is what professionals do, and it's what actually works at scale.

Most people land on option three. Here's how it works.

Reverse SEO: the method that actually works

Google shows 10 results per page. Roughly 92% of search traffic never clicks past page one. If you can make sure the 10 results people see for your name are all things you control or that reflect you positively, the unwanted result becomes effectively invisible. It still exists on page two or three. Nobody ever looks there.

The method is simple on paper:

1. Audit your current page one results.
2. Claim every high-authority platform that will rank for your name.
3. Publish optimised content on those platforms.
4. Build internal links between them.
5. Wait for Google to re-index and re-rank.

The execution is where people get stuck.

Step 1: Audit what's actually on page one

Open an incognito window so your personal search history doesn't skew the results. Search your full name. Then search your name plus your city ("John Smith Sydney"). Then your name plus your profession ("John Smith accountant").

Write down every result on page one for each search. Label each one:

• Controlled: you own this or can edit it (your LinkedIn, your website, your Crunchbase profile).
• Positive: someone else's content but it makes you look good (a news article about an award, a podcast interview).
• Neutral: not harmful but not helping (a directory listing, a mention in an unrelated article).
• Negative: actively hurting you (a bad review, a lawsuit, an old scandal, a data broker listing).

Now count. How many of the 10 results do you actually control? If the number is under 6, that's your first problem.

Step 2: Claim the platforms that rank for personal names

Google gives huge ranking power to certain platforms because they're trusted. If you have a profile on these sites, it's almost guaranteed to rank on page one for your name. Here are the ones that work:

• LinkedIn. Always ranks top 3 for your name if you have a complete profile.
• Your own website on your exact name domain if you can get it.
• Medium. Articles you publish rank quickly and carry authority.
• About.me. Simple landing page that ranks well.
• Crunchbase. Especially for business owners and professionals.
• GitHub. Strong signal if you're in tech.
• Muck Rack. If you're a journalist or do any media work.
• Twitter/X. Your profile page ranks for your name.

You want profiles on as many of these as you can justify. Not spammy. Real profiles with real content. Each one fills a slot on page one that might otherwise be taken by something you don't want.

Step 3: Publish content that ranks

A profile alone isn't enough. Google ranks pages based on freshness, authority, and relevance. A LinkedIn profile you updated three years ago and forgot about will rank lower than one with recent activity.

What to publish:

• A LinkedIn "About" section that's 150 to 250 words, written in first person, mentioning your profession and location naturally.
• A Medium article about something you know well. Doesn't have to be long. 500 to 800 words with your name as the byline.
• An About.me page with your photo, bio, and links to your other profiles.
• If you have a personal website, an "About" page optimised for your name (title tag, headings, content).

Publish over a few weeks, not all in one day. Google notices patterns and rewards consistency.

Step 4: Link your profiles together

When your LinkedIn links to your Medium, and your Medium links to your About.me, and your About.me links back to LinkedIn, Google sees a connected network. It ranks each one higher because they reinforce each other.

This isn't about stuffing links everywhere. It's about making sure that from any one of your profiles, someone (or Google's crawler) can find all the others.

Step 5: Wait. Seriously.

Google doesn't re-crawl your name every day. It takes time for new profiles to get indexed, build authority, and start ranking. In our experience with clients at ORMA:

• New profiles start appearing in search results within 2 to 4 weeks of publishing.
• Meaningful changes to page one happen within 2 to 3 months.
• Full transformation of search results usually takes 4 to 6 months.

Anyone promising faster is either lying or using tactics that will backfire. Google penalises shortcuts.

What doesn't work

A few common things that waste time and money:

• Paying data brokers to remove your information. They'll take your money and re-list you three months later.
• Buying "SEO packages" from random agencies that promise to rank you. If they won't tell you exactly what they're doing, assume it's risky.
• Reporting content to Google unless it's genuinely illegal. Google rejects most requests.
• Creating fake profiles to push down negatives. Google will detect and remove them.
• Trying to hide from Google entirely. The absence of you just leaves room for data brokers and old news to fill the void.

Do it yourself or hire someone

You've got three paths:

Do it yourself with no tools. Free, but slow. You'll spend 20 to 40 hours researching, claiming, and writing. Easy to make mistakes. Hard to track progress.

Use a tool like Cetra. $249 per month. Gives you the audit, the action plan, and the AI-generated content for each platform. You publish it yourself. Most people are finished with the initial setup in a weekend, then it's just monthly monitoring.

Hire a firm like ORMA. Done for you, but expensive. Usually $5,000 to $15,000 depending on the situation. Best for serious reputation problems or people who genuinely don't have time.

If you want to see where you currently stand before deciding, Cetra runs a free reputation audit. Takes 60 seconds. Tells you your score out of 100 and what's hurting you.

A note on timing

The best time to do this is before you need it. When someone Googles you for a job interview or a contract, it's too late to start. These things take months to move.

If there's nothing urgent, start now anyway. Build the foundation while it's easy, so that if something ever does come up, you're already well-positioned. That's exactly what we tell our ORMA clients who've already been through it once.