How to remove Google search results about you

Have you ever Googled yourself? You might be surprised at how much information can be turned up about you from a simple search—though it depends on how public your online presence is and how common your name happens to be. If you don’t like what you see, there’s a silver lining: Google gives you tools to remove your details from results pages.

There are numerous reasons why other people might put your name into a Google search, from old school friends wanting to get in touch to potential employers seeking to ask about hiring you. If someone else is looking you up, then you want the information they see about you to be accurate.

You might also not want to be found at all—or think your personal information could be used for nefarious purposes. If you want to scrub results from Google rather than correct them, that’s possible too. The easiest way to do this is in a desktop web browser, though you’ll find similar options on the mobile version of Google too.

What Google can do

Google’s search result removal tools are designed primarily to protect your privacy and sensitive data you don’t want the whole world knowing. If, for example, you see that your phone number or home address has been made public, you can take steps to get them taken down.

Google says this bucket of sensitive information can also include social security numbers, bank account numbers, credit card details, medical records, copies of your handwritten signature, and confidential login credentials. If you don’t want this kind of information to show up in a search, then Google lets you do something about it.

What these tools aren’t really for is censoring or editing Google search results—if you appear in a news story and don’t want the publicity, for example, or you’d rather your LinkedIn page was ranking higher than your Instagram page. These aren’t changes you can tell Google to make.

Besides the personal privacy angle, there are a couple of other reasons you can ask Google to scrub results from its list: if the information these results contain are outdated, or if you have a legal reason for removing a web link (like copyright infringement). When you ask to remove links, you’ll be asked to specify the reason for the request.

It’s important to note that these processes don’t remove the information from the internet—the relevant pages will simply stop showing up in Google searches, making them harder for other people to find. To actually get these details scrubbed from the web, you need to get in touch with (or take steps against) the website they appear on.

How to remove results from Google

There are a couple of ways to start a removal request. The first is to actually run a Google search for your name: Click the three dots next to any web result that subsequently appears on screen, and pick Remove result from the panel on the right.

You then get to choose the reason for the removal request. The first option is It shows my personal info and I don’t want it there. Click on this and you can specify the type of information that’s shown, before confirming you don’t want to see it in search results—just follow the instructions to make the request.

You can also pick I have a legal removal request, which takes you to a separate page where you can outline the reasons for your request, or choose It’s outdated and I want to request a refresh—with that last option, you simply click Request a refresh and you’re done, no more form filling required. (Note: Google results generally show the most updated version of a web page, but sometimes an out-of-date version appears and Google needs to be told to crawl the page again.)

Alternatively, you can go straight to Google’s support page for removing results, and click Start removal request. This gives you the options we’ve already mentioned, plus a few more—you can use it to remove results that show explicit or illegal material, for example, even if it’s not directly related to you.

After the request is made, Google will then keep in touch with you via email. You’ll get an email confirming the request has been made, as well as one telling you what action has been taken (if any). If additional details are required for Google to more fully assess the request, the company will ask over email.

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