#listing removal

[plural-blocklist]

Listing removal

Caniscorpse

[lifeofpsi]

Get me off this list!

Have you ever googled yourself?  If not, I encourage everyone to do it.  You will find some surprising results, including (sometimes incorrect) detailed information about your residence, business, etc.  

I recently found a whole set of business listings results for an old business that I had for a few months around 5 years ago.  Listings for this business were everywhere with an old address and (unfortunately) a current cell number.  No wonder I still receive promotional material and phone calls!  

So I set out to remove my name.  Here is my experience.

There are some core sites that seem to feed information to many of the directories - path, localeze, etc.  Pay attention to the small text that details their affiliates who are actually providing the information.

These sites want you to sign up (claim your business) to delete your listing.  Quite backwards - the whole point of you removing these entries is to simplify and streamline your identity, and that usually does not involve signing up for new things that may result in more spam.  They claim it is to verify your identity but it is not clear how they would validate it anyway given their signup processes.

Find their contact us info (when possible - some of them don't even let you do this unless you are a signed up business or an affiliate/advertiser) and send them a polite email to ask that you be removed.  I got positive results from: Patch, YellowBot, and Localeze.

Some of them are not so easy to either find contact information or get a response - Merchant Circle, DexKnows, and Yahoo - my strategy is to try and send them a request in some way once every few weeks. 

Now I am trying to be patient.  Apparently it takes a while for the listings to be closed or finally be removed from search...  

There has got to be an easier way - maybe there is a service out there that does just this?  Seems like a good business idea.