Usually, Google only allows you to remove results if they expose illegal or personal information or are outdated. There are several ways to remove such links:
- Use the “Results about you” tool that crawls the web for pages containing your personal and contact data and removes them from SERP
- Use a content removal form where you can submit URLs directly. This one also works for sites with exploitative removal practices, meaning the ones that refuse to take content down or charge for the removal
- On the Google search results page, click the three dots next to the unwanted URL and click “Remove result.” Then select the reason for removal and follow the prompts
Note that these methods don’t remove the original page from a website, but simply stop showing it in the search results. You can find more information here: https://onerep.com/blog/how-to-remove-your-personal-info-from-google
If the links don’t expose your personal info, you’ll have a hard time convincing Google to remove them. What you can do is try to suppress them in the search results. That means creating content about you that will rank higher and will kick unwanted links out from the search results, or the first page at least. The content you create can be anything from social media and business profiles to press releases - anything that will be linked to your name or any other search query you want covered. However, it may take time for these pages to show results and you also might have to educate yourself on SEO.
Answer from James on Stack ExchangeVideos
How do I control Google results for my name?
How do I block my name from being searched on Google?
1) Opt out of people search sites. Request them to take down your information.
2) Delete or make your social media profiles private. This helps keep your name out of sight.
3) Contact website admins. Ask them to remove your name from their pages.
4) Search for your name on Google. Click the three dots next to any result and select “remove results.”
These steps can help clean up your online presence!
Does Google allow you to remove personal information?
Usually, Google only allows you to remove results if they expose illegal or personal information or are outdated. There are several ways to remove such links:
- Use the “Results about you” tool that crawls the web for pages containing your personal and contact data and removes them from SERP
- Use a content removal form where you can submit URLs directly. This one also works for sites with exploitative removal practices, meaning the ones that refuse to take content down or charge for the removal
- On the Google search results page, click the three dots next to the unwanted URL and click “Remove result.” Then select the reason for removal and follow the prompts
Note that these methods don’t remove the original page from a website, but simply stop showing it in the search results. You can find more information here: https://onerep.com/blog/how-to-remove-your-personal-info-from-google
If the links don’t expose your personal info, you’ll have a hard time convincing Google to remove them. What you can do is try to suppress them in the search results. That means creating content about you that will rank higher and will kick unwanted links out from the search results, or the first page at least. The content you create can be anything from social media and business profiles to press releases - anything that will be linked to your name or any other search query you want covered. However, it may take time for these pages to show results and you also might have to educate yourself on SEO.
Google serves search results based on information they have gathered from publicly available source. Due to this, you need to get your information removed from those sources (or have them make it private) before Google Search will remove your information. Of course, there are exceptions to this.
From Google's help on removing personal information:
To contact the website owner:
Contact us link: Find a "Contact us" link or an email address for the site owner. This information is often at the bottom of the site's homepage.
Find contact information using Whois: You can perform a Whois ("who is?") search for the site owner using Google. Go to google.com and search for whois www.example.com. The email address to contact the site owner can often be found under Registrant Email or Administrative Contact.
Contact the site's hosting company: The Whois search result usually includes information about who hosts the website. If you're unable to reach the website owner, try contacting the site's hosting company.
If the website owner has removed the information, it will eventually be removed from Google Search as part of our regular updating process. To speed up the process of removing it from Google Search, use the Outdated Content Removal tool.
Situations Google will take direct action ("personal information that creates significant risks of identity theft, financial fraud, or other specific harms"):
- unwanted & explicit personal images from Google
- involuntary fake pornography from Google
- content about me on sites with exploitative removal practices from Google
- select financial, medical and national ID information from Google
- “doxxing” content - content exposing contact information with an intent to harm
If you have a legal reason for removing data from Google searches, use Google's legal troubleshooter form to get the right results.
Beyond these options, such as in a case where you share a name with someone who posts legal content with which you object, it may be impossible (or prohibitively expensive) to get a search result removed. Be careful before paying a reputation service to do this. There are many unsavory ones out there, so research and consider going with a well-known brand if you don't do the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) yourself.
If you do wish make your search results show up above others', here are some tips. This is not a simple or easy option, but is possible.
- Update & edit your Google profile
- Make your own web page. Hosting is even available for free on Google with a Google account.
- Add content you like
- Add Google SEO to your site
- Contact sites you like and trust and try to get them to share links between their site and yours. This is usually expected to be reciprocated on your site with a link to their page.
- Link to your (relevant!) content from social media (Facebook, Twitter, etc)
- Google "how to fix google search results" to get more up-to-date tips
Recently I saw several people here on reddit posting how they googled themselves, freaked out and wanted to wipe those results. So, I thought I'd share a brief instruction on how I did this for myself.
This is a way to erase your name from inquiry results for free. Note that google allows this only for PII: signatures, ID’s, bank account numbers and stuff like that. But to clean up info from public records, legal and government documents or what others posted about you, you will have to get yourself a data deletion service.
If you are not familiar, those are tools that send official requests to people finder sites and companies to make them forget you. The whole process is automatic, and it results with your details wiped from Whitepages, Beenverified and similar sites. Also from data brokers databases. So, it increases privacy and reduces spam. If you are interested, here is a post describing them quite well.
Here is how you delete results about you:
Search for your name with quotation marks. If you are often called by your nickname or have a past surname, make inquiries for those too.
Collect URLs and screenshots of the results you want to get deleted.
Go to: https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/9673730, scroll down and click “start removal request”.
Click on the edit icon to the right of “what do you want to do?” and select “remove information you see in Google Search.”
Select where you found the info that you want to be wiped.
Click on the edit icon to the right of “the information I want removed is” and select “in Google’s search results and on a website.
Under “have you contacted the site’s website owner?”, select “no, I prefer not to.”
Then choose what you want to eliminate. It’s best if you select specifically what you’ve found, and not just any inquiry results.
Upload URLs and screenshots you collected previously and proceed with the rest of the form.
Last step, check the declaration at the bottom of the form and click “submit.”
If you want to take your privacy seriously, r/privacy sub has some good instructions and tips on how to stop your data from being collected in the first place. Stay safe!