Google announced updates to its privacy features today, including an update that allows users to more easily remove their contact information from search results.
If you’ve ever typed your name into Google and found your personal email address, phone number, or home address on a search result, you’ve encountered the problem that Google is trying to mitigate. A wealth of personally identifiable information (PII) exists on the web, and users are sometimes unaware of how easily searchable they are.
Google rolled out the Results About You dashboard to its website and mobile app in September 2022 in order to make it easy to remove PII from search results. The dashboard at launch allowed users to manually request removal of their contact info if they found it while searching.
The new update makes it even easier to take action. Google is rolling out a notifications feature that will automatically let you know when your PII comes up in new search results, so long as you enter it into the dashboard first. Clicking on one of these notifications will bring up an option to request the detected PII to be removed — right in the dashboard.
To enable the update, go to goo.gle/resultsaboutyou. Alternatively, you could open the Google app on your phone, tap on your profile avatar, and find “Results About You” through the menu.
There are limitations to the “Results About You” dashboard. Google cannot remove an item from the Internet at large, only from Google search results, so your PII will still exist on the offending webpage after it’s delisted from Google.
Separate from the “Results About You” notifications, Google is also allowing users to request removal of any personally explicit photos from search results through a dedicated form. Previously, these requests were limited to photos uploaded without consent. It’s also enabling an optional blur for explicit photos when they show up in search results.
