How do I clean up my online reputation?
Start by fixing what you control: correct and complete every profile, reply to every review, and ask every recent customer for a new one. Report anything that breaks a platform's rules. Then publish accurate content, your website, profiles and real work, so the good results outnumber the bad ones for your name. Removal of unflattering but truthful content is rarely possible, so the clean-up is mostly building, not deleting.
The fastest gains are on the things you own. Claim and complete your Google Business Profile, fix the hours and category, add real photographs, and make sure the name, address and phone number match your website exactly. Do the same on every directory you are listed on. Inaccurate and incomplete profiles look neglected, and neglected looks untrustworthy.
Then deal with the reviews. Reply to every one, the good ones briefly and the bad ones calmly and factually, and start asking recent customers for reviews the day the job finishes. A run of fresh reviews changes both the rating and the impression of a business that is alive and busy. For reviews that are fake or break the rules, report them; the process is covered in our Google reviews questions.
Next, the search results. Anything that violates a platform's policies or publishes your private details can be reported for removal. Anything defamatory needs legal advice. Everything else needs outranking: pages you control that Google trusts enough to show first for your name. Your website, your profiles, a case study, a local news mention, and content that answers what customers ask.
Give it time and keep the habits. Most reputations are not cleaned up in one push. They are rebuilt by a business that keeps asking, keeps replying, and checks the first page for its own name every month.
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