You search your own name, half expecting nothing interesting. Instead you get your home address on a site you've never heard of, a phone number you've had since college, and a list of your relatives.

That data isn't just embarrassing. It's the raw material for phishing calls, package theft, and harassment. The good news is that you can get most of it out of Google. The catch worth knowing up front: removing something from Google Search doesn't delete it from the internet. Those are two separate jobs. Doing only the first leaves the page sitting there for anyone with the direct link.

Here's how to do both.

What Google will remove — and what it won't

Start here so you don't spend an afternoon on a request that was never going to be approved.

Google will consider removing search results that expose:

  • Contact details like your home address, phone number, or email
  • Government ID numbers — Social Security, driver's license, passport
  • Bank account and credit card numbers
  • Images of your handwritten signature or ID documents
  • Confidential medical records
  • Login credentials
  • Doxxing content — personal information paired with threats, or a large pile of aggregated data with no legitimate purpose
  • Non-consensual intimate images

It won't remove accurate news coverage, government records, or court filings. If Google decides a page serves the public interest, the request gets denied even when the information is genuinely yours. The full policy sits on Google's removal page.

Start with "Results about you"

This is the fastest path and it's free. More than 10 million people have used it, though plenty still don't know it exists.

Go to goo.gle/resultsaboutyou. Or open the Google app, tap your profile photo, and choose "Results about you." Click Get started and enter the contact details you want watched — address, phone, email. The tool then prompts you to add government ID numbers, a capability Google added in early 2026. It encrypts anything you enter there.

From that point the tool does the searching. It scans results, flags matches, and alerts you when something new appears. When it finds a page you want gone, you request removal from inside the dashboard and track the outcome under Removal Requests — pending, approved, or denied.

Google rebuilt the hub in 2026 and also shortened the path inside Search itself. Click the three dots next to any result and you'll see what's eligible for removal, plus a faster way to submit.

When you need the full removal form

"Results about you" handles contact information well. It's thinner on everything else.

For a Social Security number, financial data, medical records, or doxxing, go straight to Google's removal request form. Have your evidence ready — the exact URLs, the search queries that surface them, and screenshots. Reviews usually take a few days.

Most denials come down to one thing. The content is still live and unchanged at the source. Which brings us to the step people skip.

Remove it at the source

Delisting a page from Google doesn't touch the page. It still exists, still loads, and still turns up on other search engines.

If a small site or forum published your information, email the owner and ask for deletion. This works more often than people expect.

Data brokers and people-search sites are the harder problem. Each one runs its own opt-out process, usually buried at the bottom of the page, and you work through them one at a time. It's tedious. It's also the part that actually solves the problem, because Google indexes what those sites publish.

Once the source page is gone or corrected, use Google's Refresh Outdated Content tool to push the index to catch up. Order matters here. Submit before the source changes and you'll get denied.

Expect it to come back

Brokers buy and re-scrape public records constantly. Listings you cleared in January can reappear by summer.

Two habits handle this. Set a quarterly reminder to search your name and phone number in a private browsing window. And leave monitoring switched on in "Results about you" so the alerts do the watching for you.

Paid removal services automate the broker opt-outs. They save real time. They also cost a monthly fee. And none of them make removal permanent — they just keep resubmitting on your behalf. Worth it if the manual work isn't going to happen otherwise.

A few special cases

Anyone under 18, or their parent, can request removal of their images from Search. Non-consensual intimate imagery has its own faster reporting path. Readers in the EU and UK hold additional rights under GDPR's right to be forgotten. Californians can use the state's DELETE Act platform to opt out of registered data brokers in a single submission.

Where to start today

Open a private window and search your name. Write down every URL that makes you uncomfortable, then work the top three.

You won't get to zero. You don't need to. You need the easy paths closed, and that's a weekend of work at most.