At I/O 2022 in May, Google announced a new tool to simplify the process of removing search results that contain your contacts and other personally identifiable information (PII), and it’s now in use. Today, when you open the Google app on Android and click on your profile avatar in the top right corner, you will see a new “About your results” menu item.
Tapping it will take the user to a page explaining how they can ask Google to remove search results that contain phone numbers, home addresses, emails, or other PII.
If you find something while browsing, click on the three-dot menu that appears in the top right corner of each result. The existing ‘About this result’ panel will open and a new ‘Remove result’ option will appear at the bottom of your screen.
After following this process, you can monitor the progress of deletions from your About results. In addition to ‘All requests,’ you have filters such as ‘In progress’ and ‘Approved’. This page also allows you to make a new request, which includes a “Why do you want to delete this result?” step.
The options include:
- It shows my personal contact information
- It shows my contact with the intention of harming me
- It shows other personal information
- It contains illegal information
- It is out of date
Back at the I/O conference, Google said it would launch in the coming months. This evening, with reports from Europe and the US, it is now in front of the first users, but this has not yet been widely rolled out. Google explained this by saying
"It is worth noting that when we receive a removal request, we will assess all content on the page to ensure that we have not restricted other broadly useful information, for example in news articles. Of course, removing contact information from a Google search does not remove it from the web, which is why you may wish to contact the hosting site directly if you are willing to do so."
You can also remove deletion requests directly from this page, which fully details Google’s deletion policy for personal information.
