How to Remove Your Personal Information From Google Search Results
A practical walkthrough of the legitimate ways to get your address, phone number, or an outdated page off Google search results, including what Google can and cannot do about it.
See what is published about you before you read on
The scan checks the data brokers and people-search sites in our catalog for your name and shows what each one publishes. No account needed.
No account needed. Adding a city and state is what lets us tell your record apart from everyone who shares your name.
You can remove personal information from Google search results in three ways: use Google's own "Results about you" tool for your address, phone number, or email; request removal of outdated content that no longer exists on the source page; or get the site that published it to take the page down or edit it. Google can stop a result from showing up in Search. It cannot delete the page itself, because Google does not host it, the underlying site does.
That distinction matters more than it sounds like it should. Most guides to "removing yourself from Google" skip straight to a form, and then people are confused a month later when the same address shows up under a slightly different search. Here is the full picture: what each tool actually does, in what order to use them, and where Google's authority simply stops.
What "removing from Google" actually means
Google Search is an index of pages other people and companies host. When you search your own name and see your home address in a snippet from a people-search site, two separate things are true at once: Google is displaying that result, and the people-search site is publishing the underlying data. Asking Google to remove the result changes what Search shows. It does not touch the page on the broker's server, which will keep existing, and which other search engines can still surface, until you deal with the source directly.
With that in mind, there is a sensible order of operations: try Google's own removal tools first because they are fast and free, then go after the source, because that is the only fix that actually lasts.
Step 1: Try the "Results about you" tool first
Inside your Google Account there is a tool called Results about you. You search your own name the way a stranger would, and for any result that shows your home address, phone number, email address, or a small set of similarly sensitive personal identifiers, you can flag it and ask Google to remove that specific result from Search. It is free, it does not require you to contact the site owner, and Google reviews the request against its own policy rather than asking you to prove anything legally.
The limitation is scope. This tool is built for contact information categories specifically. It is not a general "delete anything about me" button, and it will not remove a news article, a professional bio, or a listing that does not contain one of those specific data types, no matter how much you would rather it were not there.
Step 2: Request removal of outdated content
Google also runs a separate tool, sometimes called the outdated content removal tool, for a different problem: the live page has already changed, or come down entirely, but Google's cached snippet still shows the old version. This is exactly the situation after you have successfully opted out of a data broker. The broker's page is gone, but Google crawled it last a while ago and the old listing is still what shows up in Search.
Submitting the URL here tells Google to recheck the page and refresh what it shows. It works well when the source has genuinely changed. It does nothing for a page that is still live and unchanged, since Google will simply crawl it again and show the same result.
Step 3: Get the source removed or changed
Because Google reflects what is actually on the web, the durable fix is the source page, not the search result. If a data broker or people-search site is publishing your address or phone number, opt out at that site directly using its own opt-out process, then use the outdated content tool above to speed up Google noticing the change. If it is a personal website or forum post, contacting the site owner is usually faster than any Google form. If the content is a form of abuse rather than a data-broker listing (doxxing, non-consensual explicit images, or something similar), Google has separate takedown paths for that category of harm.
What Google will remove even without a source takedown
Google's personal-information removal policy covers a narrower set of categories where it will act on the Search result directly, because the harm potential is high enough that Google treats it as its own policy violation rather than purely a copy of someone else's page. As of this writing that list includes things like:
- Government identification numbers, such as a national ID or social security number
- Bank account or credit card numbers
- Images of handwritten signatures
- Confidential login credentials
- Medical records
- Non-consensual explicit imagery, including involuntary fake or "deepfake" pornography
- Content published with an intent to harass, threaten, or extort ("doxxing")
If your situation matches one of these, it is worth filing under this policy specifically rather than the general contact-info tool, since Google reviews it differently.
What Google will not remove
Honesty is more useful here than optimism. Google will not remove a result simply because it is unflattering, old, or something you would rather people did not find. In particular:
- Genuine news reporting and journalism, even when it names you
- Court records, government filings, and other official public records
- Content you or someone with legal authority over the page put there yourselves
- Reviews, opinions, or professional information a reasonable person would consider public-interest, not private
This is not Google being unhelpful. It reflects a real legal and editorial line that exists everywhere in privacy law, including the statutes covered in our piece on whether it is legal to remove your information from the internet: erasure rights are built with a carve-out for freedom of expression and the public record, on purpose.
A quick comparison
| Tool | Removes what | Where it works | Typical outcome |
|---|---|---|---|
| Results about you | Address, phone number, email, and similar contact info | Google Search only | Drops that specific result; the source page still exists |
| Outdated content tool | A stale cache of a page that already changed or came down | Google Search only | Refreshes the index once the source has genuinely updated |
| Source opt-out or takedown | The actual listing, at its origin | The broker or website itself | Removes the data everywhere that site republishes it, and Google follows once it recrawls |
| Personal-information policy removal | Content matching Google's specific harm categories above | Google Search only | Removed from Search regardless of the source, though the page can still exist elsewhere |
Why the address keeps coming back
Data brokers do not create your information, they resell it, usually sourced from public records like voter files, property deeds, and court dockets, then repackaged and cross-sold to other brokers. Removing one Google result, or even opting out of one broker, does not stop a different broker from publishing the same underlying fact a few months later, sometimes at a slightly different URL that a one-time check will not catch. That is why a single cleanup pass rarely holds, and why an ongoing scan matters more than a one-time removal.
Deindex runs this whole process for you
Deindex finds every data broker and people-search page still publishing your information and files the actual opt-out or legal erasure request, instead of leaving it as a to-do list across fifty different sites. Start a free scan to see what is exposed right now, use our data broker opt out guides for a specific site, or see pricing for ongoing monitoring so a relisting gets caught automatically.
The takeaway
- Search your own name in the Results about you tool and flag any result showing your address, phone number, or email.
- If a page has already changed or come down, use the outdated content tool to refresh Google's copy of it.
- Fix the actual source, opt out of the broker or contact the site owner, since that is the only step that stops the information from resurfacing.
For the full list of data broker and people-search sites worth checking beyond Google, see our guide on removing your information from the internet. And if you want to know exactly which law backs each kind of request, read is it legal to remove your information from the internet.