Google "Results About You": What It Can (and Can't) Remove From Search
Google yourself sometime. Full name, in quotation marks. For a lot of people, page one includes a data broker profile — home address, phone number, relatives, all free for anyone to read. It's an awful feeling, and it's also a solvable one. Google has a free tool, Results about you, built specifically for getting personal information out of its search results. In February 2026, Google expanded it in a meaningful way.
This is the honest walkthrough: what the tool is, the step-by-step of filing a removal request, what Google will and won't pull, and — most importantly — why this is only half the job.
What "Results about you" actually is
"Results about you" is a privacy dashboard inside your Google account. You enter your name, phone number, home address, and email, and Google scans its search results for pages that match. When it finds one, you can request removal directly from the dashboard instead of hunting down the right form.
The tool is free, requires a Google account, and Google says more than 10 million people have already used it. Turn on notifications, and Google alerts you whenever new results containing your information show up.
The February 2026 expansion: what changed
When the tool launched in 2022, it covered contact information: phone numbers, home addresses, and email addresses. On Safer Internet Day in February 2026, Google expanded "Results about you" to cover government-issued ID numbers — driver's licenses, passports, and Social Security numbers. Before this change, getting ID numbers out of search results fell into a gray area that meant using Google's general removal form. Now it qualifies for removal directly through the dashboard.
The update launched in the US first, with Google saying additional regions would follow. Google also simplified the tool for removing non-consensual explicit images from search, including letting people submit multiple images in a single form.
Why the ID expansion matters: Contact info is doxxing bait. ID numbers are identity-theft bait. A leaked SSN or driver's license number in search results is the raw material for fraud, so getting these into a one-click removal tool was a bigger deal than it looked like in the headlines.
What Google will actually remove
Google's removal policy for personal information covers a defined set of doxxing-type information. You can generally request removal of search results showing:
Your phone number, home address, or email address — the original use case for the tool, and still the most common one. Data broker listings showing your current address are squarely in this bucket.
Government-issued ID numbers — driver's license, passport, and Social Security numbers, per the February 2026 expansion.
Images of IDs — photos or scans of identity documents, such as a leaked driver's license image.
Non-consensual explicit imagery — intimate images of you shared without consent, handled through a dedicated (and prioritized) removal path.
Login credentials — usernames and passwords exposed in search results.
When you submit through "Results about you," a human reviewer looks at the request. If the result shows your contact info or ID and doesn't qualify as public-interest content, it gets pulled from Google Search.
What it will NOT remove
This is where expectations usually crash into policy. Removing information from Google's index is not the same as deleting it from the internet, and Google draws lines:
Public records. Court records, property records, voter registrations, and other government-published information generally stay. Google typically won't remove content because a government agency published it.
News articles. If a news outlet reported something about you — including arrests, lawsuits, or financial trouble — Google generally treats that as content of public interest and won't remove it. This is true even when the story is old. (Suppression, meaning pushing it down with newer positive content, is the realistic strategy there.)
Content of public interest. Pages about elected officials, business leaders, or matters of broad public concern are generally protected from removal, even if they contain personal details.
Anything on the source site itself. This is the big one. Google can remove the result from search. The page it pointed to still exists on the website that published it. Your data broker profile is still there, still selling your address to anyone who lands on the site directly.
The honest limit: If your home address is sitting on a data broker profile and Google removes that profile from search results, you've made it harder to find — which genuinely helps against casual snoops, harassment, and scam targeting. But the data broker still has it, still lists it, and still sells it. Removing from Google is a visibility fix. Removing from the data broker is a deletion. You need both.
Step-by-step: submitting a removal request
Before you start, do the baseline: open a private or incognito window and search your full name in quotation marks, then your name plus your city, your phone number, and your street address. Screenshot anything you want removed. Google's review takes days, and screenshots make it easy to confirm what changed.
Sign in to your Google account. The tool only works for signed-in users over 18.
Open "Results about you." In the Google app, tap your profile image and select it, or go to your Google Account → Data & privacy → scroll to "Results about you." There is also a direct URL: myactivity.google.com/results-about-you.
Enter your name. Full name, plus any variations people might search for — nicknames, maiden name, middle names.
Add your contact info. Home address (current and previous), phone number with area code, email addresses. This is what Google scans for. Confirm the info belongs to you when prompted.
Turn on notifications. Choose email, app alerts, or both. This is the monitoring part — Google pings you when new matches appear, which saves you from manually Googling yourself every month.
Review the results Google finds. The dashboard shows matches. For each result you want gone, select Request to remove and follow the prompts, choosing the reason that fits (contact info, ID number, etc.). For results you want to keep — your LinkedIn, your business site — select Mark as reviewed so they stop showing up in your queue.
Track status in the dashboard. Requests move through statuses — all requests, in progress, approved, denied — and Google emails you updates.
You can also request removal from a specific search result without the dashboard: find the result, open the three-dot menu next to it, and choose "Remove result." But the dashboard is the better system — it's the one with monitoring.
What happens after you submit
Review typically takes a few days, sometimes a couple of weeks. If approved, the result stops appearing in Google Search — not instantly everywhere, but as Google's index refreshes, which is usually quick. You'll get an email confirmation.
If a request is denied, Google usually says why. Common reasons: the page was judged to be public-interest content, the information wasn't actually yours, or the result didn't contain the type of personal information the policy covers. You can appeal or refile if circumstances change.
One more thing people miss: if the source page gets republished or the data broker re-adds you and Google re-indexes it, the result can come back. That's what the notifications are for.
What about Bing?
Google is where most people search, but it's not the only index. Bing has its own process: a "Privacy Concern" removal form where you can request removal of non-consensual personal information — things like non-public phone numbers, addresses, and ID numbers — from Bing's results. It works on a case-by-case basis similar to Google's. DuckDuckGo, which pulls heavily from Bing's index, generally benefits from Bing removals. It takes ten minutes and there's no reason to skip it.
The real fix: pair it with data broker opt-outs
Here's the math that matters. Consumer Reports and Tall Poppy tested removal approaches head-to-head: paid services removed roughly 35% of data broker listings in four months (DeleteMe: 27%), while the do-it-yourself group removed about 70%. The catch is time — doing it manually across hundreds of brokers can take 304+ hours, which is why you need a prioritized system instead of wandering broker to broker.
The combination that actually works looks like this:
Set up "Results about you" (this article) to catch what's already in Google's index and alert you to new appearances.
Re-check every 3 to 6 months. Data brokers continuously refresh from public records. Deleted profiles come back. Maintenance is forever — budget a couple of hours a quarter.
One side benefit worth knowing: your phone number is one of the pieces of information data brokers circulate most, and it's exactly what lands you on robocaller lists. Getting your number off people-search sites is also one of the most effective ways to stop spam calls — same deletion, two problems solved.
Frequently asked questions
Does "Results about you" delete my data from the internet?
No. It removes matching results from Google Search. The information stays on whatever website published it until you get it removed at the source — usually by opting out of the data broker that published it.
Is "Results about you" available outside the US?
The tool has been rolling out internationally, though coverage and features vary by country. The February 2026 ID-number expansion launched in the US first, with Google saying more regions would follow. Check the dashboard in your Google account to see what's available where you are.
Can Google remove my data broker profiles from search?
Often, yes — if the profile shows your phone number, home address, or other covered personal information, you can request removal of that result from Google Search. But the profile itself remains on the broker's site. File an opt-out with the broker too, or the listing just sits there waiting to be re-indexed.
How long does a removal request take?
Typically a few days to a couple of weeks for a decision, with removals taking effect as Google's index refreshes. You can watch the status in the dashboard, and Google emails you when there's a decision.
Will Google remove a news article about me?
Generally no, if the article is accurate reporting on a matter of public interest. News content is one of the main categories Google's policy protects. Expunged or sealed records are a different story — if the underlying record is gone, a removal request for the search result has a better chance.
What if my information reappears after removal?
It happens — data brokers re-import public records continuously. The notifications in "Results about you" exist for exactly this. When an alert fires, refile the removal request, then go hit the source broker again. Quarterly re-checks are part of the routine; deletion is maintenance, not a one-time project.