If bad actors get their hands on your personally identifiable information (PII), they can use it to swindle, impersonate, or even endanger you on the internet—and in the real world. One of the prime places to find PII is on Google, and while Google can’t stop that info from appearing on other websites, you can try to remove PII from the search giant’s results. Read on to find out how.
Learn When Personal Info Appears in a Google Search
This first step is important since you can’t tell Google to delete your info if the site isn’t even finding and displaying it. Google has an option to notify you when that happens.
The spot to visit is called the Results About You activity page, and you have to be logged into Google for it to work. Follow the prompts on the screen as Google asks for your physical addresses, emails, and phone numbers. Tell Google how you want to be notified (email or push notification via the Google app). Then wait.
(Credit: Google)
After a few hours, you should get a report from Google on what’s turning up that’s yours, PII-wise. You can also return to the Results About You page to check. There, you can tick off the boxes next to any result you want to make sure is removed from search. The status of your request will also be displayed (eventually).
How to Remove Search Results
New in 2025 was the ability to request immediate removal of items you see in Google search results on a mobile or desktop browser. If you don’t like the result, click the three-dot menu next to the listing and tap the Remove result button. You then have to specify why you want it removed: it shows PPI, it’s illegal content (like copyright-infringing material or child abuse), or it’s outdated and needs a refresh.
(Credit: Google)
If Google makes a change in response to your request, you’ll get a notice.
How to Submit a Manual Request to Delete
Google will let you manually request the removal of other things you may find harmful. That includes:
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National/government ID numbers
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Bank account information
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Credit card numbers
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Personal signatures
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Login info and credentials
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Medical records
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“Irrelevant pornography” (that is, explicit material somehow tied to your name)
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Login credentials
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Deepfake porn you appear in against your will
You can request this without even proving that the data floating out there is a problem (with some exceptions).
The first stop is this Google Search Help page, which outlines the options above and provides the direct link to request the removal of your personal information from search.
(Credit: Google)
If you own the website displaying the information you don’t want shown, Google spells out how to block a URL or specific pages from Google search results. It involves robots.txt files, meta tags, and password-protecting page files.
Removing information that only appears in Google search results is one thing. But the information is probably in the results and on a separate website. If it’s the latter, Google may not be very effective. It will ask whether you’ve contacted the site’s owner to have the info removed first. It also suggests ways to contact a site.
Maybe you don’t want to reach out to a site, or you’ve already tried and not been successful. Google asks you a series of questions, such as what type of info you’d like removed, narrowing it down to one specific thing when possible. It will also ask whether the content is being shared with the intent of doxing you—that’s when someone shares PII with the intent to harm. You may need to enter a lot of data, but the more detail you provide, the less likely it is that Google will have to follow up with you before nuking the PII in search results.
Google says that if your PII appears on a live page that you control and you’ve already updated it to remove the information, it should eventually go away. However, the search engine might have cached the page, so request to remove outdated web pages. You’ll need specific URLs for the pages; you can submit up to a thousand on the form.
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(Credit: Google)
You can also request the removal of outdated images found at images.google.com. You’ll need to copy the URLs for each image (right-click and select Copy Image Address in the Chrome browser).
You’ll receive an email confirmation that your request has been received. If you don’t, do it again. Google reviews the request, gathers additional information if needed, and finally notifies you of any action.
Note that a request isn’t always guaranteed to be granted. “When we receive removal requests,” Google stated in 2022, “we will evaluate all content on the web page to ensure that we’re not limiting the availability of other information that is broadly useful, for instance, in news articles.” Again, removing the info from search results doesn’t remove it from the web page where it originally appeared.
Watch Out for Illegal Stuff
If you see something in a Google search that’s illegal, such as potentially criminal content, intellectual property infringement, or Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM), go to Google’s Report Content for Legal Reasons. Google has a whole video about it.
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Good Luck With Other Search Engines
Having the options above is a big deal since Google doesn’t really want to hide this information. In fact, not removing search results used to be company policy, but a 2014 court ruling in Europe forced Google to allow it for citizens looking to eradicate errors and lies. Now, many more countries can benefit.
But what are the PII removal policies of other search engines? Sadly, they’re almost nonexistent.
With DuckDuckGo, which prides itself on privacy, your main free option is to use the email [email protected] and hope that the PII you want removed falls under privacy laws. You won’t get any response from the company. (It also tries to pass the buck to Bing.)
However, there is a paid option: Subscribe to DuckDuckGo Privacy Pro, and you get full access to DuckDuckGo Personal Information Removal, which sends your info on to 50-plus data broker sites to request removal. However, you can do that with any personal data removal service. Our top pick is Incogni.
Microsoft’s Bing appears limited to allowing you to submit a Page Removal Request, but only for pages no longer online. This is mainly for webmasters. Ultimately, Bing expects you to go to the website that first published your PII, do all the heavy lifting, and then try the Page Removal Request.
Yahoo essentially says, “If it’s out there, we’ll probably display it.”
Sorry, But You’re Never Invisible
Scrubbing search engines of your digital footprint is not the same as taking it off the internet. Search engines didn’t put the info out there—they indexed it, grabbing the data from another source. They might snag it again from yet another source.
You’ll never be completely free of search engine results unless you delete any traces of yourself and get offline entirely. You can always try using the aforementioned personal data removal services, which do what they can to prevent your information from being used by data brokers (for a fee, of course).
The Best Personal Data Removal Services We’ve Tested
Until you delete all your old email accounts, stop using mobile apps and location services, quit social media, stop online shopping, and never sign into anything ever again, some entity will have something on you. You could try suing to remove your data, but that’s likely to trigger the Streisand effect. That said, we do have some tips that can help you almost completely disappear from the internet.
About Our Expert
Eric Griffith
Senior Editor, Features
Experience
I’ve been writing about computers, the internet, and technology professionally since 1992, more than half of that time with PCMag. I arrived at the end of the print era of PC Magazine as a senior writer. I served for a time as managing editor of business coverage before settling back into the features team for the last decade and a half. I write features on all tech topics, plus I handle several special projects, including the Readers’ Choice and Business Choice surveys and yearly coverage of the Best ISPs and Best Gaming ISPs, Best Products of the Year, and Best Brands (plus the Best Brands for Tech Support, Longevity, and Reliability).
I started in tech publishing right out of college, writing and editing stories about hardware and development tools. I migrated to software and hardware coverage for families, and I spent several years exclusively writing about the then-burgeoning technology called Wi-Fi. I was on the founding staff of several magazines, including Windows Sources, FamilyPC, and Access Internet Magazine. All of which are now defunct, and it’s not my fault. I have freelanced for publications as diverse as Sony Style, Playboy.com, and Flux. I got my degree at Ithaca College in, of all things, television/radio. But I minored in writing so I’d have a future.
In my long-lost free time, I wrote some novels, a couple of which are not just on my hard drive: BETA TEST (“an unusually lighthearted apocalyptic tale,” according to Publishers’ Weekly) and a YA book called KALI: THE GHOSTING OF SEPULCHER BAY. Go get them on Kindle.
I work from my home in Ithaca, NY, and did it long before pandemics made it cool.
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