How to remove personal information from Google Search, and what “approved” actually means

By Michael Obraitis, Managing Partner, and Michael Dale, CEO · Published September 6, 2026 · Last reviewed September 2026 · ADAM Pulse Knowledge Base · Privacy and Security Series

Short answer

Google will consider removing certain personal information from Search. It will not remove your name because you would rather not appear.

And the distinction that governs everything else here:

So the working order is: source first, then Search. Doing only the second is why people are surprised when the information resurfaces.

What Google will actually remove

Google's removal policy covers specific categories of personally identifiable information:

• Home address, phone number, email address
• Social Security or tax identification numbers, and resident ID card numbers
• Bank account and credit card numbers
• Images of your signature, and images of identification documents
• Private records, such as medical records
• Confidential usernames and passwords

Google handles doxxing separately: qualifying cases include a URL carrying your personal information alongside explicit or implicit threats, or a significant amount of aggregated personal information. It also has separate policies for intimate and explicit imagery.

Can I remove my name from Google?

Not simply for being your name.

A result becomes eligible when it carries information covered by the policy above — an address, a phone number, a government identifier, financial details, credentials. The name alone is not the qualifying fact.

Google may also decline where the content is considered valuable to the public. Its own example is news: if the content is about something important or newsworthy, Google may not take it down.

So the realistic goal is not remove my name from Google. It is remove the sensitive information attached to my name.

Results about you, and what it actually monitors

Results about you is Google's tool for finding Search results that contain your personal contact information and requesting their removal. Google notes it is rolling out to users over 18 in certain markets.

You give it the contact details you want watched:

• Your name, a nickname, a maiden name
• Home addresses
• Phone numbers
• Email addresses

Using it

1. Open Results about you while signed into your Google Account.
2. Enter the contact information you want monitored.
3. Turn on notifications, so Google can tell you when it finds a new match.
4. Open the To review section and look at what it found.
5. Select a result and choose Request to remove.

Google then evaluates the request against its policies. With notifications on, this is as much an ongoing monitor as a one-off cleanup — which is what makes it worth setting up even after you have finished a pass.

Reporting a result directly

You do not have to start inside Results about you. Signed in, search your name, find the result, open About this result from the menu beside it, choose Remove result, and follow the reporting flow. Status updates go to the email on your account.

Address, phone, email

The method is the same for each. Search it in quotation marks — "555-555-1234", "name@example.com", your full address — plus "Your Name" + the detail. Then request removal of eligible results.

But identify where it came from, because that is the part that persists. Common sources: people search sites, data brokers, property records, business registrations, professional licences, directories, old websites and social profiles.

Removing the Google result does not touch any of them. The opt-out process for the sites themselves is in how to remove yourself from data brokers and people search sites.

When it is a government ID, financial account, or password

These are not privacy housekeeping. Treat exposure as a security incident.

Government identifiers — Social Security, tax ID, passport, driver's licence. Request removal through the detailed removal request, find where it originated, ask the source to remove it, and consider identity-theft precautions. Do not wait for a scheduled cleanup.

Bank and card numbers. Removal from Search is one step. Contact the institution and decide whether the account or card should be replaced.

Passwords and confidential usernames. Google will consider removing these — but a publicly exposed password should be considered compromised regardless. Change it, change it everywhere it was reused, enable multifactor authentication, review active sessions and recovery information, and check for unusual activity.

Private medical records. Request removal, contact the source, document the exposure, and consider whether the organisation that published it should receive a formal privacy complaint.

Photos

For an ordinary image on someone else's site, Google's general advice is to contact the site owner, because Google does not control the source.

Separate mechanisms exist for sensitive imagery — non-consensual intimate imagery, certain explicit personal imagery, and images involving people under 18. Anyone can report nude or sexual images showing someone under 18.

Removal request, or refresh outdated content?

These solve different problems and using the wrong one wastes weeks.

For the second, open the Refresh outdated content tool, enter the URL, and submit. Google can then recrawl and update what it shows.

What "approved" actually means

This is the part almost no guide covers, and it changes what you should expect.

An approved request can be handled two ways:

• Full removal — the URL stops appearing for any Search query.
• Query-based removal — the URL stops appearing only for searches containing your name.

Google applies the narrower one where a page is valuable to the public, or carries information belonging to other people or businesses.

Checking status

Open Results about you → Removal requests. Google shows the link to the page you flagged, the day and time you submitted, a request ID, and the contact information you flagged on that page.

The four statuses are In progress, Approved, Denied and Undone.

There can also be a delay between approval and the result actually disappearing. Record the request ID and the date; if you are working through several, that record is the difference between following up precisely and starting again.

Why a request gets denied

Common reasons:

• The content does not meet the removal policy
• The information does not appear to be about you
• You control the page and can remove it yourself
• The content is newsworthy or otherwise valuable to the public

That last one is where most denials on otherwise reasonable requests land, and it is a judgement Google makes rather than a rule you can appeal your way around.

If the source is a government or institutional record, removal from Search may not be available at all, and the remedy is elsewhere — the agency's own correction process, an applicable privacy request, or legal advice depending on what is exposed.

News articles are not removed simply because you dislike them or because they name you. Different considerations apply where content breaches another policy or applicable law.

The edge cases

You own the site. Remove or change the information at the source. Google's personal-information removal is intended for content you do not control, and once the page changes, the index follows.

Requesting for someone else. Google states that you or a representative can ask for information about you to be taken down. Do not enter another person's details into your own Results about you profile as though they were yours — that is likely to be denied.

Someone under 18. Report nude or sexual images of a minor through Google's dedicated route. Results about you itself is limited to adults in some markets.

The bottom line

Google gives you real leverage over specific categories of personal information in Search, and almost none over the fact that you exist online.

Use it in the right order: find what is exposed, remove it at the source where you can, request removal of the Search result, use refresh outdated content where the page has already changed, and check the status rather than assuming.

And keep the two limits in view. Removing a result does not remove the page. Approved does not always mean gone. Both are still worth doing — they just are not what most people assume they are buying.

This is one stage of a wider cleanup; the whole sequence is in how to delete your digital footprint.

Frequently asked questions

Related articles

• How to delete your digital footprint, and what you realistically cannot remove — the hub for this series; Search removal is one stage of the wider cleanup.
• How to remove yourself from data brokers and people search sites — the source-side removal that has to happen alongside this.
• What does Google know about you, and how do you actually find out? — what is held inside your account, as distinct from what appears in Search.
• How to delete your Google search history completely — the account-side history controls.

References

Every claim here is checked against Google's own documentation rather than secondary coverage. Links verified 6 September 2026. Where this article gives a recommendation rather than a documented Google behaviour, it says so.

1. Google Search Help — Remove your personal information from Google— source for the categories of personally identifiable information Google will consider removing, the separate treatment of doxxing content, the statement that newsworthy content may not be taken down, that you or a representative may submit a request, and that removal from Search does not remove content from the internet.
2. Google Search Help — Results about you— source for what Results about you monitors (name, nickname, maiden name, home addresses, phone numbers, email addresses), the four request statuses (In progress, Approved, Denied, Undone), the distinction between full removal and query-based removal, and the details shown in the removal-requests view.
3. Google Search Help — Refresh outdated content— source for the tool used when a page has already changed at the source but Google is still showing the old result.
4. Google Privacy Policy— source for the categories of information Google collects and associates with an account.
5. Google — How Google retains data we collect— source for the two-stage deletion process and the circumstances in which information is retained longer.
6. Federal Trade Commission — What To Know About People Search Sites That Sell Your Information— source for people search sites as a category, and for information re-appearing when public records change. Referenced for the source-removal half of this process.