How to Remove Personal Information From Google

To remove personal information from Google, use the “Results about you” tool in your Google account. It lets you request removal of search results that show your phone number, email address or home address, and in the US it now covers government ID numbers such as your Social Security number, driver’s license and passport. Google removes qualifying results from Search, but the information stays on the website, so you also need to ask the site itself to delete it.

Those two steps together, Google first and the source second, are what actually reduce your exposure. This guide walks through both.

What Google will remove

Google has a set of specific removal policies for personal content in Search. Based on Google’s Search Help pages, the main categories are:

Type of information	What qualifies
Contact details	Your home address, phone number or email address
Government ID numbers	Social Security or tax ID numbers, and other government-issued ID numbers
Financial information	Bank account or credit card numbers
Images of IDs and signatures	Pictures of your ID documents or handwritten signature
Private records	Confidential records such as medical records
Login credentials	Confidential usernames and passwords
Doxxing	Personal information shared alongside explicit or implicit threats, or calls for others to harass you, or a large amount of your personal information gathered together without a legitimate purpose
Intimate imagery	Explicit or intimate images shared without your consent, including fake explicit images made to look like you
Images of minors	Images of someone under 18, requested by that person or a parent or guardian, with exceptions for newsworthy images
Sites with exploitative removal practices	Pages about you on sites that demand payment to take content down

Google also states that it may decline a request if the content is newsworthy or in the public interest. A business phone number on a company’s own website, or an address that appears in a news report, is unlikely to be removed.

What Google won’t remove

Most of what people want gone isn’t in that list. Google generally won’t remove a result just because it is unflattering, old or inaccurate, and it won’t remove information like your name, employer, age or a photo of you from a public event unless another policy applies. A negative article or review is handled through different routes, usually starting with the publisher or the platform.

How to use Results about you

Results about you is the fastest route for contact details and ID numbers, because it both finds the results and lets you request removal from one dashboard. Here is how it works:

1. Open the tool. In the Google app, tap your profile picture and choose “Results about you,” or go to your Google account’s Results about you page in a browser. You need to be signed in.
2. Add the details you want monitored. Enter your name, phone numbers, email addresses and home address. Add older addresses and numbers too, since people-search pages often show past details. In the US, you can also add government ID numbers.
3. Review the results Google finds. Google scans Search for pages showing your details and lists them. Check each one; some will be legitimate, such as your own business listing.
4. Request removal. For each result you want gone, choose the removal option and confirm the reason. You can also submit a URL you’ve found yourself.
5. Turn on notifications. Google can alert you when new results with your details appear, so you can act on them quickly.
6. Track the status. Each request shows as in progress, approved or denied. If Google denies one, the notice usually gives the reason.

A few practical points. Removal is from Google Search results, not from other search engines like Bing. A removed page can reappear under a new URL if the site republishes it, which is why the monitoring and alerts matter. And Google’s ID number monitoring has been rolling out in the US first, so availability elsewhere may differ.

Other Google removal requests

Some personal information falls outside Results about you, or you may want to request removal of a page you found another way. Google’s Search Help center has separate request forms for each policy in the table above. The ones people most often need are:

• Doxxing. If your details were posted to encourage harassment or with threats, report it under Google’s doxxing policy and include screenshots showing the threatening context. If you feel unsafe, contact the police as well.
• Non-consensual intimate images. Google has a dedicated process for explicit images shared without consent, including AI-generated fakes. Report the image to the host site and to Google at the same time.
• Images of minors. A person under 18, or their parent or guardian, can request removal of images of them from Google’s image results. Our guide for parents on keeping kids’ details private covers prevention.
• Exploitative removal sites. If a site is asking for money to remove a page about you, Google has a specific request form for this. Our guide on how to remove a mugshot from the internet covers the most common version of this problem.
• Your house on Street View. Street View has its own “Report a problem” form for blurring a home; see our guide on how to blur your house on Google Street View.

Removing information at the source

The second half is getting the information deleted from the pages that publish it. Where the details came from shapes how you do that.

People-search sites and data brokers

Most personal information in search results comes from people-search sites, which compile public records, marketing data and old listings into profiles. Almost all of them have an opt-out process, usually a form and an email confirmation. They are often linked to each other, so removing yourself from one doesn’t clear the others, and profiles can reappear when the site refreshes its data. Our guide on how to remove yourself from people-search sites covers the process in detail.

Depending on your state, you may have legal rights to have data brokers delete your information. State privacy laws differ, so check what applies where you live.

Forums, blogs and social media

If someone posted your details on a forum, a blog or a social platform, report the post using the platform’s own tools. Posting someone’s private information without consent breaks the rules on every major platform. For a small site with no reporting tool, look for a contact page or the site owner’s details and send a short, polite request. Our free Name Scanner (launching soon) is being designed to find the reporting route for each result about you and draft that request for you to review and send yourself.

Your own old accounts

Sometimes the source is you: an old business listing, a résumé you posted years ago, a public profile you forgot about. Log in and delete or edit the details, or close the account. This is part of cleaning up your wider presence, which we cover in our guide to cleaning up your digital footprint.

Public records

Property records, court filings and voter records are often public by law, and the agencies that hold them generally can’t delete them at your request. Some states offer address confidentiality programs for people at risk, such as survivors of domestic violence. If that applies to you, contact your state’s program or a local advocacy organization.

Once the source changes, refresh Google

If a site deletes your details but Google still shows the old snippet, use Google’s Refresh Outdated Content tool. Paste the URL, and if the page still exists, enter a word that used to appear but no longer does, such as your street name. This clears the stale version faster than waiting for Google to recrawl.

A step-by-step checklist

1. Search your name in Google, with and without your city, and with your phone number and email in quotes. Note every result that shows personal details.
2. Set up Results about you with all your current and past contact details, and ID numbers if you’re in the US.
3. Request removal of every qualifying result, and turn on alerts.
4. For anything outside Results about you, use the matching Google request form: doxxing, intimate imagery, images of minors or exploitative removal sites.
5. Opt out of each people-search site that lists you, and report posts on forums and social platforms.
6. Delete or update old accounts and listings you control.
7. Use the Refresh Outdated Content tool for pages that have changed.
8. Repeat the search every few months. Data brokers refresh their records, and new pages appear.

A worked example

This is an illustrative scenario, not a real case. A teacher searches her name and finds three people-search profiles showing her home address, her mobile number and the names of her relatives, plus an old forum thread where a former neighbor posted her address during a dispute.

She sets up Results about you with her current and two previous addresses and her phone number. Google finds the three profiles and the forum thread, and she requests removal for all four. Within a few weeks, the three people-search results are removed from Google. The forum thread takes longer, and she adds screenshots showing the hostile context under Google’s doxxing policy.

Meanwhile she opts out of each people-search site directly and reports the forum post to the forum’s moderators, who delete it. Two months later, a Results about you alert shows a new profile on a fourth people-search site that had pulled data from one of the others. She repeats the process. This is normal: removing personal information is maintenance, not a one-time fix.

Common mistakes

• Stopping at Google. Removed results can still be found on the site itself and on other search engines.
• Entering only your current address. Older addresses and numbers often appear on people-search pages and are just as useful to someone looking for you.
• Paying a site to remove its own listing. A site that demands money for removal is exactly what Google’s exploitative removal policy targets. Report it instead.
• Ignoring the alerts. New pages appear over time. The monitoring only helps if you act on it.

When to get help

Doing this yourself is entirely possible, and the steps above are what most people need. It becomes a lot of work when your details are spread across dozens of sites, when you’re being harassed, or when you hold a public role that attracts attention. Our personal reputation management service handles ongoing monitoring and cleanup for individuals, and our content removal service handles the requests, follow-ups and policy reports, and tells you plainly what is and isn’t removable.

Frequently asked questions

Is Google's Results about you tool free?

Yes. It is part of your Google account and there is no charge to use it or to submit removal requests.

How long does it take Google to remove personal information?

It varies. Many requests get a decision within days to a few weeks. Requests that need more review, such as doxxing reports with context, can take longer. You can see the status of each request in the tool.

Can I remove my home address from Google?

In most cases, yes. Home addresses are one of the contact details Results about you covers. Google removes the result from Search, but you’ll need to contact the site or data broker to have the address deleted from the page itself.

Why did my information come back after I removed it?

Usually because the site republished it at a new URL, or a different site copied it. People-search sites also refresh their data regularly. Keep Results about you alerts turned on and repeat opt-outs when new pages appear.

Does removing a result from Google remove it from Bing?

No. Each search engine has its own process. Removing the information at the source is the only way to clear it from every search engine at once.