Google Results About You Tool: What It Removes, What It Misses, and How to Use It
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The short answer
Google Results about you is a free dashboard in your Google account that scans Search for your home address, phone number, email and, since February 2026, your Social Security, driver's license and passport numbers, then lets you request removal of any result that shows them. It de-lists the result. It does not delete the page, so the data broker that published your address still has it, other search engines still index it, and the listing can return under a new URL until you opt out at the source.
Last updated 10 August 2026. Capabilities checked against Google Search Help and Google's February 10 2026 expansion announcement on that date.
What Google Results About You removes, and what it does not
The tool has a narrow, well-defined job: personally identifying contact data that creates a real-world safety or fraud risk. Most of what people want gone from Search is not that, and understanding the line before you file saves you the frustration of a denial you cannot appeal.
Swipe the table sideways to see every column.
| Information type | Removable | What to know |
|---|---|---|
| Home address | Yes | One of the three original categories. You can register multiple addresses, including previous ones. |
| Phone number | Yes | Multiple numbers allowed. Register the cell and the landline separately if both are published. |
| Email address | Yes | Multiple addresses allowed. Worth adding the old one you stopped using, since brokers still list it. |
| Social Security number | Yes, since Feb 2026 | Added in the February 10 2026 expansion, United States first. |
| Driver's license number | Yes, since Feb 2026 | Same expansion. Google frames these as identity-theft risks rather than contact details. |
| Passport number | Yes, since Feb 2026 | Same expansion, same US-first rollout. |
| Nickname or maiden name | As a search alias | You enter these so the tool knows to watch for them. They are not themselves removable. |
| Non-consensual explicit images | Separate flow | Handled through its own process, which now takes several images in one submission. |
| Your name on its own | No | A name is not personal contact information. There is nothing to request here. |
| Old jobs, photos, opinions | No | Not in scope. This is a contact-data tool, not reputation management. |
| News articles about you | No | Google treats newspapers as publicly valuable and declines these. |
| Government or school pages | No | Same public-interest exception. Court records and .edu directories stay. |
The February 2026 expansion is the meaningful change. Until then the tool handled three things: address, phone, email. Google announced on February 10 2026 that it would also take requests for results exposing Social Security numbers, driver's license numbers and passport numbers, and that it would notify you when it finds something matching what you registered rather than waiting for you to check. The ID-number coverage launched in the United States first.
How to use the Results About You tool, step by step
About twenty minutes the first time, then a few minutes whenever an alert arrives. Step two is where people under-deliver and step six is where they stop too early.
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Step 1
Open the tool from your Google account
In the Google app, tap your profile picture, then Results about you. On desktop or mobile web the dashboard lives under your Google account rather than in Search itself, which is why most people never find it. You need to be signed in. There is no version that works without a Google account, and there is nothing to pay.
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Step 2
Enter every contact detail you want watched
Add your home address, phone number and email. Then add the ones you would not think of: the apartment you moved out of three years ago, the number you kept from your last carrier, the personal email you abandoned. Data brokers publish history, not current facts, and a stale address is the single most common thing people find still sitting in Search.
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Step 3
Add your name variants as aliases
The tool accepts a nickname and a maiden name alongside your legal name. Add hyphenated forms, married and pre-marriage surnames, and the spelling a county clerk got wrong. Matching runs against what you register, so a variant you leave out is a variant nobody is watching for.
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Step 4
Review what the scan surfaces and request removals
The dashboard returns Search results carrying the details you registered. Each one has a request-removal action, and you submit it from the dashboard rather than filling in a legal form. Requests you have already filed are tracked in one place with a status attached.
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Step 5
Read the status, because Denied means something specific
A request shows In progress, Approved, Denied or Undone. Denied usually means the page falls under one of the public-interest exceptions, not that Google made a mistake, and refiling the same request will produce the same answer. Approved means the result is de-listed. Google says you can check whether the result is gone within a few hours of approval.
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Step 6
Then go remove the source listing, or it comes back
This is the step the tool cannot do for you and the reason most people end up back at square one. Google de-lists a URL. The page carrying your address is still live on the broker that published it, still crawlable, still reachable from any other search engine, and still liable to reappear in Google under a slightly different URL when the broker regenerates its profile pages.
The thing nobody tells you before you start
De-listed is not deleted
What an approval actually buys you
Google's own help page puts it plainly: when you remove a result showing your personal info from Google Search, it does not mean the info is gone from the internet, because the info still exists on the source web page.
Concretely, after an approval the page carrying your home address is still live. It is still reachable by direct link, still in Bing's index and DuckDuckGo's, still visible to anyone who searches your name on the broker's own site, and still being sold in the bulk feeds that other people-search sites buy from.
What changed is that one URL no longer surfaces for the queries Google associates with your details. That is genuinely worth having. It is not the same as removal, and the gap between those two things is where most of the disappointment in this category lives.
Why the same result reappears
People-search sites do not keep one static page per person. They generate profile URLs from a database, and those URLs change as the database changes: a new relative gets linked, an address is added, a slug is rebuilt.
Your removal request was filed against a specific URL. When the broker regenerates the profile at a different one, Google indexes the new page as a new page, and your request has no bearing on it. Nothing was reversed and nobody did anything wrong. The request simply never covered it.
This is why the sequence matters. Remove the record at the broker first, then use Results about you, and there is no source left to regenerate from. Do it the other way round and you are cleaning a window while the room keeps filling up. The same logic applies to removing personal information from Google more broadly.
Results About You compared to opting out and to a removal service
These are not competitors. They are three different jobs, and the free one is the right first move for almost everybody. What follows is the honest split of what each one can and cannot do.
Swipe the table sideways to see every column.
| Results about you | Manual broker opt-out | Paid removal service | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hides the result in Google Search | Yes | Eventually, once Google recrawls | Eventually, once Google recrawls |
| Deletes the data at the source | No | Yes, for that one site | Yes, across many sites |
| Works in Bing and DuckDuckGo | No | Yes | Yes |
| Stops the listing being rebuilt | No | No | Only if it refiles on a schedule |
| Covers sites Google never indexed | No | Yes | Yes |
| Number of sites reached | Search results only | One per request | Hundreds per cycle |
| Your time per pass | About 20 minutes | 10 to 20 minutes per broker | Setup only |
| Cost | Free | Free | $40 to $250 a year |
Price range in the last row reflects published 2026 annual pricing across the main US services, from Optery's $39 Core plan to DeleteMe's $129 and Incogni's $179.88 unlimited tier. The full breakdown, including which broker counts are comparable, is on best data removal services.
What to do after you have filed with Google
Look at the results the dashboard surfaced and note which sites they came from. In the United States it will nearly always be the same handful of people-search brands, and each has its own opt-out that actually deletes the record.
Spokeo opt out
The most-searched removal in the country, and usually the first result Google surfaces.
TruePeopleSearch removal
No paywall, so its pages rank hard. Removal takes a phone verification.
Whitepages opt out
Old addresses linger here longer than anywhere else.
BeenVerified opt out
Email-verified, quick, and it covers a group of sister sites.
PeopleConnect suppression center
One request clears TruthFinder, Intelius, Instant Checkmate and US Search.
The full opt-out list
Every working form, if you would rather do the whole job by hand.
One more thing worth doing while you are in there: after the source page is actually gone, use Google's Refresh Outdated Content tool. It tells Google to recrawl a URL you know has changed, which clears a stale cached result faster than waiting for the normal crawl cycle. Results about you does not do this for you.
Frequently asked questions
What is Google Results About You?
Results about you is a free privacy dashboard inside your Google account that scans Google Search for your home address, phone number, email address and, since February 2026, government-issued ID numbers. When it finds one, it alerts you and lets you request that the result be removed from Search. It does not delete the underlying web page.
Does Google Results About You work?
It works for exactly what it claims: getting a URL that exposes your contact details out of Google Search results. It does not work as a way to get your information off the internet. The page stays live, other search engines keep indexing it, and the data broker that published it can rebuild the profile under a new URL. Treat it as one of two steps, not the whole job.
How long does Google Results About You take?
Google does not publish a service-level commitment. What it does say is that a request moves through In progress to Approved, Denied or Undone, and that once a request is approved you can check whether the result has gone within a few hours. Requests that need human review against the public-interest exceptions take longer. Be skeptical of the specific day counts quoted by removal vendors, since none of them cite a source.
Is Google Results About You legit and safe to use?
Yes. It is a first-party Google feature that lives inside your Google account, not a third-party service, and it is free. You are giving Google contact details it can already associate with your account so it can match them against Search results. If a site charges you to use Results about you, or asks you to enter your details somewhere other than your Google account, it is not the real tool.
What will Google not remove from search results?
Google declines removals for pages published by educational or government institutions and by newspapers, on the grounds that they carry information valuable to the public. It also will not remove content just because it is unflattering, out of date, or professionally damaging. Professional information posted specifically to harm you goes through a separate, more detailed removal request form instead.
Does removing a result from Google delete the information?
No. Google is explicit about this in its own help documentation: removing a result means the info still exists on the source web page. Anyone with the direct link still reaches it, Bing and DuckDuckGo still index it, and the broker still sells it. To make the information actually go away you have to opt out at the site that published it.
Why does my information come back after Google removes it?
Because Google removed a URL, not a record. People-search sites regenerate their profile pages continuously, so the same address reappears at a slightly different address on the same site, and that new URL was never covered by your earlier request. The only thing that stops the cycle is deleting the record at the broker and re-checking on a schedule.
Do I need a Google account to use Results About You?
Yes. The dashboard is part of your Google account, and the alerting works by matching the details you save there against new Search results. There is no signed-out version. If you have several Google accounts, register your contact details on the one you actually check, because that is where the notifications land.
Is Google Results About You available outside the United States?
Partly. The core contact-detail removal has been available in a range of countries and languages. The February 2026 expansion covering Social Security, driver's license and passport numbers launched in the United States first, with Google saying additional regions would follow. The updates to the explicit-image flow rolled out more broadly.
What is the difference between Results About You and a data removal service?
Results about you controls what Google shows. A data removal service files opt-out requests at the brokers themselves, so the record is deleted rather than hidden, and it refiles when the listing reappears. They solve different halves of the same problem, and using the free Google tool first costs you nothing before you decide whether the paid half is worth it.
Keep reading
Remove personal information from Google
The wider job: both halves of getting your address out of Search for good.
Remove your information from the internet
Everything beyond Google, in the order that actually works.
Are data removal services worth it
What you get for the money once you have used the free tools.
What we remove
The categories of record US people-search sites hold on you.
How much data removal costs
Published prices, plus what doing it yourself really costs in hours.
How Dataremoval works
What we file, how often we refile, and what we do not promise.
See which sites Google is showing before you file
Run the free exposure scan at the top of this page and you will know which people-search sites carry your name, so your Results about you requests and your opt-outs hit the same targets. Dataremoval is in early access and there is nothing to buy today.
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