How to remove your personal information from Google

Google’s “Results about you” tool

In 2022, Google quietly launched a tool that most people still do not know exists. Called “Results about you,” it lets you find Google Search results that contain your personal contact information and request their removal directly from search results.

This was a significant shift. For years, Google’s position was that it indexed the open web and did not take responsibility for the content it surfaced. The “Results about you” tool represents Google acknowledging that surfacing someone’s personal information in search results creates real harm, and giving individuals a mechanism to address it.

The tool works through your Google account. Navigate to myactivity.google.com/results-about-you, or open the Google app on your phone and tap your profile icon, then select “Results about you.” Google will search for results containing your name combined with personal details you provide: phone numbers, email addresses, and physical addresses. It then presents matching results and lets you request removal for each one.

Approval may remove the URL fully or only for queries containing your name or identifier. Read Google's decision for the scope. The source page remains available unless its publisher removes it.

What qualifies for removal

Google does not remove everything. Their published removal policy defines specific categories of personal information that qualify:

• Contact information: Phone numbers, email addresses, and physical addresses, particularly when combined with your name in a way that could facilitate unwanted contact or targeting.
• Government-issued ID numbers: Social Security Numbers, tax identification numbers, and other national ID numbers.
• Financial information: Bank account numbers, credit card numbers, and financial records that could enable fraud.
• Medical records: Personal health information that appears in search results without your consent.
• Login credentials: Usernames and passwords exposed through data breaches or other sources.
• Doxxing content: Pages that expose your contact information alongside explicit or implicit threats, or content designed to facilitate harassment.
• Non-consensual intimate images: Explicit images shared without consent, including deepfakes.
• Content involving minors: Personal information about individuals under 18.

The common thread is information that creates a specific, identifiable risk: identity theft, financial fraud, physical harm, or targeted harassment. Google is most likely to approve removal when the exposed information has no legitimate public interest and its presence in search results creates clear potential for harm.

What does not qualify

Understanding what Google will not remove is just as important as knowing what they will. These categories are generally rejected:

• General mentions of your name. A blog post that mentions you by name, a conference speaker list, or a company directory page. These are considered part of the public web and do not expose sensitive personal information.
• News articles and journalistic content. Even if unflattering or inaccurate, news coverage is protected. Google does not de-index legitimate journalism, including court reporting, business news, or investigative pieces. There are narrow exceptions for news articles that expose specific PII like phone numbers, but the article itself stays indexed.
• Accurate business listings. If you run a business and your business address or phone number appears in a directory, Google considers this public business information, not personal PII.
• Social media profiles you created. Your Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, or X profile was created by you, with information you chose to publish. Google will not de-index these. You need to edit or delete them yourself.
• Public records with legitimate public interest. Court filings, property records, and government disclosures that serve a public-interest function. A property deed with your name and address is a public record; Google is unlikely to de-index it unless it is being weaponized for harassment.
• Professional information. Your job title, employer, and professional credentials that appear on business or industry sites. This is considered publicly relevant professional information.

Step by step: submitting a removal request

Here is the exact process for requesting removal of a search result through Google:

1. Find the result in Google Search. Search for your name combined with your city, phone number, or other identifying details. Use an incognito window to avoid personalized results. Identify the specific result you want removed.
2. Copy the exact URL. Click on the search result and copy the full URL from your browser’s address bar. You need the URL of the actual page, not the Google search results page.
3. Open the removal tool. Go to Google’s personal information removal request form. Alternatively, use the “Results about you” dashboard at myactivity.google.com/results-about-you, which lets you manage multiple requests in one place.
4. Select the type of information. Google will ask what kind of personal information appears in the result. Choose the most specific category: contact information, government ID, financial data, etc. Be accurate. Selecting the wrong category can result in rejection.
5. Paste the URL and provide details. Enter the URL of the page. Google may ask you to specify exactly what personal information appears (e.g., “my phone number 312-555-0100 and home address”). Provide as much detail as needed for the reviewer to locate the PII on the page.
6. Confirm your identity. Google may ask you to verify that the information belongs to you. This typically involves confirming that the name and details in the result match your Google account information.
7. Submit and wait. Google will review the request and notify you of the outcome via email. You can track the status in the “Results about you” dashboard.

Choose between a live-content request and a stale-result refresh

If the source still displays eligible personal data, use Google's applicable removal request. You do not have to wait for the publisher to remove it. If the source no longer contains the data, use Refresh Outdated Content for the stale result.

After a decision

Review the response, including whether removal is full or limited to identifying queries. Check the result's scope. A new URL or another search engine needs its own review. If denied, address the stated reason before submitting additional evidence; no approval rate or turnaround is guaranteed here.

The fundamental limitation

Here is the part that most guides about Google removal gloss over: removing a result from Google does not remove your data. It removes Google’s pointer to your data.

Think of Google as a card catalog in a library. Removing a card from the catalog does not remove the book from the shelf. The book, your personal information on the data broker’s website, is still there. Anyone who walks to the right shelf (visits the broker site directly) can still find it.

This matters because:

• Data brokers sell access directly. Employers, landlords, skip tracers, and private investigators use them directly. They do not need Google to find your profile. De-indexing from Google does not affect these users.
• Other search engines still index the page. Bing, DuckDuckGo, and Yahoo may still show the result. Check them separately; a Google decision is not evidence of their decisions.
• New pages can appear. Data brokers continuously update their listings. A removed URL may be replaced by a new page at a different URL, which Google will index again. You would need to submit a new removal request for each new URL.
• Bulk data access is unaffected. Data brokers sell your information through APIs and bulk data feeds to other businesses. These channels do not go through Google at all.

Google removal is a legitimate and useful tool. But by itself, it is a band-aid. It treats the symptom (visibility in search results) without addressing the cause (your data existing on data broker sites in the first place).

Source removal and search removal can run together

Ask the publisher or broker to remove the source, and pursue eligible search-result removal in parallel. Once the source changes, a stale-result refresh is a separate route. Source suppression does not establish deletion of all records, and search removal does not remove the source.

Use the broker opt-out guide to choose an applicable source request. Keep the URL, response and check date for each path.

If the result remains after your attempt

Use the post-removal Google guide to compare the source URL, request status and decision scope before submitting again. Set up contact-data checks through Results about you. A changed source, a provider response and a search observation remain separate evidence.

Frequently asked questions