Cost & comparison

What Google removes for free, and what it will not

Checked 2026-08-25

Google will remove your phone number, home address, email and government ID numbers from search results at no cost, through a tool more than 10 million people have used. It will not remove news articles, public records, profiles, or opinions — which is where most arrest records live.

The free list

Google's own removal policies cover: your address, phone number and email; Social Security and tax ID numbers; government identification documents; bank account and credit card numbers; images of handwritten signatures and of ID documents; medical records; confidential login credentials; and doxxing content, meaning personal information published alongside threats.

The "Results about you" tool is the front door to most of that. It launched in September 2022, added a dashboard in August 2023, was redesigned in February 2025 with proactive alerts, in-search requests and a recrawl tool, and expanded in February 2026 to cover driver's licence, passport and Social Security numbers. Use it before paying anyone anything — if your problem is on this list, you are done.

The list it will not touch

News articles and media coverage. Public records, including court filings, property ownership and professional licences. User-posted profiles and social pages. Criticism, reviews and opinions.

An arrest record usually falls into the second or first of those. That is the gap this industry exists in, and it is the reason a page telling you Google will handle your mugshot for free is either mistaken or selling something else.

There is one bridge. Google's separate policy for sites with exploitative removal practices will de-index a specific URL where you are the subject, the site is not a business review site, and the site charges for removal. If your record sits on a site that charges, that is a genuine free route — and if it sits on a site that removes for free, this policy does not apply to it.

Why we are telling you this

Because the alternative is charging you for something Google does at no cost, which produces a refund and a complaint, and because a firm willing to name the limits of its own market is the one worth calling when you hit them.

So: try the free tool. Try the site's own removal process. If your case is in a state with a removal statute, send the statutory request — our state pages set out the exact method and deadline for each. Come to us for what is left, which is usually the copies, the sites that ignore requests, and the search results that survive the source going away.

The exact wording that decides the mugshot route

The condition that carries the whole exploitative-removal policy is worth quoting rather than paraphrasing, because the paraphrases in circulation are narrower than the rule. Google requires that the website requires payment — to the site or other agencies — to have the content removed. Those last four words matter: a site that keeps its own hands clean and routes you to a separate paid removal service still meets the condition.

Two limits on the other tools are just as easy to miss. The personal-information tool will not remove results from pages owned by government institutions or newspapers, whatever the content, which puts a county sheriff's roster and a local news write-up outside it by category rather than by judgement.

And a granted request under any of these does one thing: the URL you submitted stops appearing. The content stays on the web, reachable by direct link and through other search engines. Site-wide demotion exists but is applied when Google processes removals against a site in volume — no single granted request produces it.

Common questions

If Google removes it, is it gone?

No. Google removes it from search results. The page remains online, reachable by direct link, and available to any site that scrapes it. Source removal is what makes it gone.

Does the free tool cover mugshots?

Not on its own merits. Booking photographs are not on the personal-information list. They can qualify under the exploitative-removal-practices policy, but only where the host site charges for removal, and only per URL.

How long does a free request take?

Google does not publish a guaranteed timeframe, and we will not invent one. The tool now includes monitoring so you are told when new results appear, and a refresh request for pages that changed but still show old content.

Try the free route first

If any site has asked you for money to take content down, this is the free route and you should use it before you consider a paid one. Three conditions: you are the subject, it is not a business review site, and the site requires payment — to itself or to another agency — to remove the content.

Read Google’s exploitative-removal policy

Sources

Every claim on this page traces to the sources above, checked on 2026-08-25. Rules in this area change — several of the ones on this page changed in the last three years. If you find something here that is out of date, tell us and we will fix it.