Guides · 26 August 2026 · 7 min read

How to Delete My Information From Google

Learn how to remove your personal information from Google Search results and Google account services, plus why some listings keep coming back.

There are two separate jobs here, and people often confuse them. One is removing your personal data from Google's own services, like your account, activity history and photos. The other is getting search results that point to your information taken down. Google runs a search engine, but it does not host most of the pages it links to. That distinction decides what you can and cannot do.

Delete data Google holds in your account

If you have a Google account, Google stores a record of what you do across its products. You can delete much of this yourself.

1. Sign in to your Google account and open the account settings.
2. Go to the data and privacy section.
3. Find your activity controls. Here you can review and delete search history, location history, YouTube history and voice recordings.
4. Choose to delete activity by date range, or set automatic deletion so Google clears old activity on a schedule.
5. To remove a single Google service, use the delete a service option in the same data and privacy area.
6. To close everything, choose to delete your entire Google account. This removes your Gmail, Drive files, photos and purchases, so export anything you want to keep first.

This handles the data Google itself keeps about you. It does nothing about third-party websites that show up when someone searches your name. That is the harder part.

Remove information from Google Search results

Google Search is an index of pages published elsewhere. When your details appear in results, the information usually lives on someone else's website, often a data broker or people-search site. Google offers a tool to remove certain results, but it works within limits.

Use the Results about you tool

Google provides a feature that lets you request removal of search results containing your personal contact information, such as your home address, phone number or email address.

1. Open Google's Results about you tool while signed in.
2. Enter the contact details you want to monitor.
3. Google scans for results that expose those details and lists them.
4. Review each result and request removal for the ones that qualify.
5. Track the status of your requests in the same tool.

Google reviews each request and decides whether it meets the criteria. Removal from Google Search does not delete the underlying page. The information still exists on the source website, and other search engines may still show it.

Request removal of specific content

Google also has broader removal request forms for content such as involuntary explicit imagery, doxxing content that includes personal information posted with intent to harm, and outdated results that no longer match the live page. Search for Google's content removal request page, choose the reason that fits your situation, and follow the prompts. Provide the exact URLs so Google can act on them.

Go to the source, not just the search engine

Removing a result from Google is treating the symptom. The information sits on a website, and that is what you need to address. If a data broker or people-search site is publishing your profile, you have to opt out at that site.

1. Search your own name in Google and note every site that lists your details.
2. Visit each site and look for a privacy, opt-out or do-not-sell link, usually in the footer.
3. Find your listing and submit the site's removal request. Some ask you to confirm by email or verify identity.
4. Keep a record of what you submitted and when.
5. After the site removes your page, ask Google to refresh or remove the now-outdated result if it still appears.

Once the source page is gone, Google's result for it will eventually drop out of the index. Removing the result first while the page remains live tends to fail, because the content is still there for Google to find.

Data brokers rebuild their records

Be realistic about what removal achieves. Data brokers do not build their profiles by hand. They pull from upstream feeds, public records, marketing lists and each other. When you opt out of one site, you clear your entry for now. But the same broker often pulls fresh data on its next cycle, and your listing reappears, commonly within a few months.

This is not a sign you did something wrong. It is how the industry works. Removal is maintenance, not a one-time fix. Plan to repeat the checks every few months.

What cannot be deleted

Some information is public by law, and no request to Google or a broker will change that. Court filings, property records, corporate registrations and voter roll entries are public records. A broker may republish them, and you can ask the broker to stop showing them. But the underlying record stays public at its official source, and Google may index that source directly.

You can reduce how easy your information is to find. You cannot make public records private by asking Google to hide them.

A practical order of work

1. Clean up your own Google account data first, since that is fully within your control.
2. Use the Results about you tool for exposed contact details.
3. Search your name and list every third-party site showing your information.
4. Opt out at each source site directly.
5. Ask Google to remove or refresh results for pages that are now gone.
6. Repeat the whole search every few months to catch reappearances.

Doing this by hand is slow, and the reappearance problem means it never really ends. Vanish is a Mac app that finds where data brokers publish your personal information and sends CCPA deletion demands on your behalf, then keeps checking as listings come back. It is one way to handle the repetitive work, but everything above can be done manually at no cost.