Old News Stories About the Business

The second result for your name

Search for the business by name. First comes its own website. Second comes a newspaper story from five years ago.

Sometimes it is bad news: a fire, a closure, a dispute with a landlord. Sometimes it is good news gone stale: praise for a chef who has left, or a menu long since changed.

Either way, it is often the first thing a new customer reads about you, and it describes a business that no longer exists in that form.

It will not disappear by itself. But it can be put in context, and it can be outnumbered.

Why an old story keeps its place

• The news site is trusted, with years of links from other sites.
• The headline names you, matching the search word for word.
• Other sites repeated it, often linking back to the original.
• Little else competes, when few pages say much about the business.
• Archives stay online indefinitely, at the same address.

The fourth is the one within your control. Nothing will match a newspaper's standing, but the story ranks partly because there is so little else, and more pages genuinely about the business give the search something else to show.

Asking for an update, politely

Newspapers rarely remove stories, and asking them to usually costs goodwill for nothing. What many will do is correct a factual error, or add a line noting what has happened since.

Write to the newsroom, or to the reporter if they are still there, with the story's address, what has changed and when, and how they can confirm it.

"The shop moved two blocks east in 2015 and trades there today" is easy to check and easy to add. A long letter about the harm done is neither.

Be courteous, and accept the answer. An editor who adds a line is doing you a favour.

Good stories that have gone stale

Praise ages too. A feature on a founder who has retired, or on dishes no longer made, sends people in hoping for something that is not there.

Do not hide good coverage. Link to it from your own site with its date and a line of context: the founder has retired, and her recipes are still on the menu.

With a date beside it, the story reads as history rather than a promise. A wrong address or phone number in it is worth an update request of its own.

Tell the current story yourself

The most useful page is usually the About page, telling the history briefly and honestly, including the event people still ask about.

"In 2013 a kitchen fire closed us for two months; we reopened that September with a new kitchen" answers the question before anyone has to ask it.

Then come the pages that appear for a business name anyway: the Google My Business listing with current hours and recent photographs, a Facebook page that is plainly active, and the directories that matter in your trade.

Each one is a result that describes the business as it is now.

A worked example

A family-run Greek restaurant on a suburban shopping street had a kitchen fire five years ago that closed it for two months.

The local paper's story, with the restaurant's name and the word fire in its headline, still came second for the name. Written the morning after the fire, it said nothing about the reopening.

Staff kept hearing the same thing from first-time customers: they had assumed the place had closed for good.

The owners sent the newsroom a two-sentence email with the reopening date, and an editor added a one-line update at the top of the story that week.

The About page now tells the family's history in four short paragraphs, the fire and the reopening among them. The Google listing gained current photographs and its first posts.

This spring, when the founders' son took over the kitchen, the restaurant told the same paper, which ran a short piece. That gives search a newer story to show for the name.

Earning newer coverage

Local papers, community news sites and neighbourhood blogs need stories, and a local business with something genuinely new is one.

The occasions are ordinary: an anniversary, a new owner or generation, a move or a second location, an event the business runs, a project worth photographing.

Send a short note with the facts and two good photographs to whoever covers business or the neighbourhood. One real story a year adds up.

Results you control

A search for a business name usually returns its own pages, its Google listing, its social profiles and a few directories. Each one kept current is a result that speaks for you.

Give the website's main pages titles that include the business name, so more than the home page can appear for it.

But do not create thin profiles just to fill the results. They look like what they are, and a reader comparing them with a real news story will trust the story.

What not to do

Avoid anything that draws fresh attention to the old story. An angry comment under it, a public complaint about the paper, or a rebuttal page repeating its headline all give it new life.

Be wary of services promising to make news coverage disappear from search results. Legitimate stories are rarely removed, and such methods can create problems of their own.

And never answer the story with invented reviews or anonymous praise. It is easy to spot, and it turns an old story into a new one.

The counter-case

Some old stories do little harm. One about a fire that also reports the reopening, or a review of a business that has hardly changed, can be left alone or linked to with pride.

A business with a strong website, an active listing and plenty of reviews may find an old story already sits low enough that few people reach it.

And where a story reports something serious and accurate, the honest response is your own account of what has changed since, not an attempt to bury it.

For the stories that mislead: ask politely for an update, tell your current story, and give search something newer to show.

This month

1. Search your business name on a phone.
2. List every news story on the first two pages.
3. Note what each gets wrong today.
4. Ask politely for an update where facts changed.
5. Tell the history briefly on your About page.
6. Refresh your Google listing and social profiles.
7. Send one genuine story to local media.

Step four costs one short email, and it is the only change made to the story itself. A single line saying what happened next turns an alarming headline into old news, which is what it is.

The same calm, first-person tone suits replies to reviews, as covered in replying as a person instead of the team.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.