How to google yourself like an attacker, and clean up what you find
Data removal. Updated 2026-09-13. About 6 minutes to read.
Search logged out, in quotes, with operators, then use Results about you for monitoring and the source site's opt out for actual deletion.
Searching your own name tells you less than you think, because Google personalises your results and a name alone is a weak query. Someone building a profile on you does not search that way. They search your name in quotes with your city, then your old usernames, then your email address, then your phone number, and they read past the first page.
This guide shows you how to run that same sweep in about 20 minutes, how to read what comes back, and what you can actually get removed. It also covers the part people get wrong: removing a result from Google does not delete the page.
Do the search first and the removals second. You cannot prioritise removals until you know what is out there.
Set up the search so the results are honest
Your own signed in results are shaped by your history and location, so they can hide or reorder what a stranger sees first. Fix that before you start.
Open a private or incognito window and do not sign in to any Google account.
Run the same searches in Bing as well. DuckDuckGo draws heavily on Bing's index, so fixing Bing usually fixes DuckDuckGo too.
Commit to reading at least the first five pages of results. Damaging results rarely sit at the top.
Keep a simple list as you go with three columns: what was found, where it is hosted, and whether it can be removed.
Search the way someone building a profile on you would
Your full name in quotation marks, then the same again with your city, your employer, your school and your street name.
Every email address you have ever used, in quotation marks.
Your phone number in a few formats: with spaces, with dashes, and in full international format.
Old usernames and gamer tags. People reuse handles for decades, and one handle links accounts across dozens of sites.
Your name plus words that pull public records: obituary, court, arrest, deed, voter, property, permit, donation.
A reverse image search on your profile photos, using Google Lens or the camera icon in Google Images.
Search for a relative at the same address too. People search listings cross link households, so a parent's or adult child's page often exposes your address even when your own page is clean.
The operators that surface what a plain search hides
Search operators narrow a query to one site or one file type. They are how researchers find documents that never rank in normal results.
site:linkedin.com followed by your name restricts results to one site. Repeat for facebook.com, instagram.com, x.com and any forum you used.
filetype:pdf followed by your name finds meeting minutes, membership lists, club newsletters and school documents that carry addresses.
intitle: and inurl: match words in the page title or address, which is how you find profile pages on sites you have never heard of.
A minus sign excludes noise, such as a well known namesake: your name followed by -footballer.
Quotation marks force an exact phrase. Without them, Google returns people who are not you.
Triage what you found
Not every result deserves the same effort. Sort them into four buckets and work from the top.
Contact details on people search and data broker sites: highest priority, and usually removable through each site's own opt out.
Government ID numbers, bank or card numbers, images of your signature or ID documents, medical records or login credentials: highest priority and covered by Google's removal policy.
Your own old profiles and accounts: you control these, so delete the account or tighten its privacy settings.
News articles, court records and official registers: rarely removable, and usually best pushed down with newer content you control.
Use Google's own removal tools
Google runs three separate processes and people mix them up. Results about you is the monitoring dashboard. The personal information removal policy is the basis for taking a result out of Search. The outdated content tool refreshes a result whose page has already changed.
Open Results about you at goo.gle/resultsaboutyou, or in the Google app tap your profile photo and choose Results about you. Add your name, address, phone numbers and email addresses. Since February 2026 you can also add government ID numbers such as a passport, driver licence or Social Security number, starting in the US.
Review the matches Google finds and tap the removal request option next to each one that exposes your details.
For anything not caught automatically, use the removal request form under Google's policy on removing personal information from Search. It covers contact details, government ID numbers, bank and card numbers, images of signatures or ID documents, confidential medical records and login credentials.
If a page has been deleted or edited but Google still shows the old text, submit it through the Remove Outdated Content tool.
In the EU and UK, the separate right to be forgotten form applies to results returned for searches of your name. Repeat important requests with Bing, since Google's decisions do not carry across.
Delisting removes the result from Google Search. The page itself stays online, reachable by direct link and still scrapeable. To remove the data you must also opt out at the site that published it.
Check the sources Google will never show you
Search engines index public web pages. They do not index breach dumps, infostealer logs, or the private databases people search sites buy their records from. A clean first page is not evidence that your data is not circulating.
Check your email addresses and phone numbers against known breach data as a separate step, and treat any hit as a prompt to change that password and remove the number from broker listings.
Make it a standing alert instead of an annual chore
Create Google Alerts at google.com/alerts for your name in quotation marks, your email addresses and your phone number. Set delivery to as it happens.
Leave Results about you switched on so new matches are pushed to you.
Re-run the operator searches once a quarter, because broker sites republish removed records under new brands.
Keep a record of what you removed and when, so you can prove a repeat listing and escalate.
Frequently asked questions
Can I see who has googled me?
No. Search engines do not reveal who searched for a name, and any app or site promising to show who searched for you or viewed your profile is harvesting your data or charging for a fiction.
Why does Google show my home address and phone number?
Because a people search site published them and Google indexed that page. The information usually comes from public records, marketing lists and broker databases. Removing it means opting out at the source site as well as asking Google to remove the result.
How long does a Google removal take?
Requests through Results about you are often handled within days. Policy based removals can take longer, and Google may ask for more detail or refuse where it judges the information to be in the public interest. There is no guaranteed timeframe.
Does deleting a page remove it from Google automatically?
Eventually, but not immediately. Google drops it when it next crawls the page, which can take weeks. The Remove Outdated Content tool speeds that up once the live page no longer contains the information.
Should I search my email address and phone number as well as my name?
Yes, and they often return more than your name does. An email address shows up in leaked membership lists, forum posts and documents that never mention your full name, and a phone number lingers on business listings and classified ads years after you stop using it.