Platform guide

Removing a mugshot or arrest record from Google Search

Checked 2026-08-25

There are three routes, they are not interchangeable, and only one of them is free. Which one applies to you depends on a single question: does the site holding your record charge money to take it down?

The free route, and its exact limits

Google's "Results about you" tool removes search results containing your personal contact information — phone number, home address, email — and, since February 2026, results containing a driver's licence, passport or Social Security number. Google says more than 10 million people have used it. It also monitors for new results and lets you request a recrawl when a page has changed but Search has not caught up.

What it will not remove is the part that matters here: news articles and media coverage, public records including court filings, user-posted profiles, and criticism, reviews or opinions. A booking photograph on a mugshot aggregator is not on the free list on its own merits. This is the single most common misunderstanding we hear on calls, and it is why people arrive believing Google has already refused them when they have not yet made the right request.

The route that does cover mugshots

Google has a separate policy for content on sites with exploitative removal practices. Three conditions all have to hold: you are the subject of the content at the URL you submit, the site is not a business review site, and — this is the operative one — the site requires payment to the site or another agency to have the content removed.

Read that third condition carefully, because it decides your case. If the site charges, the URL is eligible. If the site removes records for free, it is not eligible under this policy, even though the record is just as damaging. That is the opposite of what most people expect.

It also removes the specific URLs you submit, not the site. Google's separate site-wide lever is a quality signal: where it receives a high volume of valid removal requests about a given site, it may demote the site in results. That is Google's decision, not something you can request.

The route that actually ends it

Removing the page at the source is the only outcome that survives. A de-indexed URL still exists, still gets scraped by the next aggregator, and reappears under a new address. Getting the record deleted where it lives — the publisher, or better, the county that published it first — is what stops the cycle.

Order matters. Source removal first, then the search request, then a recrawl so Google notices. Doing it the other way round produces a de-indexed URL pointing at live content, which is a temporary result dressed up as a permanent one.

The tool for a page that is already gone

One route gets left out of almost every guide, and it is the one that applies once the page itself has come down. Google's Refresh Outdated Content tool exists for a search result still pointing at a page that no longer exists — and its defining condition is that you must NOT own the page. That is the whole purpose of it.

It is denied for one predictable reason: the text you described is still on the live page. So sequence matters. Get the page removed, confirm it is actually gone, then file. Processing takes a few days, and an approved request lasts 180 days or until the URL stops existing, whichever comes first.

What it does not do is remove live content. It syncs Google's copy to reality rather than acting as a takedown, and it reaches Google alone — not Bing, not a saved link, not a screenshot somebody already took.

Common questions

Will Google remove my mugshot if I just ask?

Not under the free personal-information policy — booking photographs are not on that list. It may qualify under the exploitative-removal-practices policy, but only if the site holding it charges for removal, and then only for the specific URLs you submit.

Is de-indexing the same as removal?

No. De-indexing hides one URL from Google's results. The page stays online, stays reachable by direct link, and stays available to the next site that scrapes it. That is why de-indexing is cheaper — market rates run roughly $500 to $3,000 versus $2,000 to $10,000 or more for source removal plus de-indexing — and why on its own it does not hold.

What if the record is on a government website?

Then the source is the county or agency, and that is often the better target. Courts have started treating a county's own mugshot lookup as a legal exposure rather than routine transparency, and some agencies have stopped publishing entirely.

Try the free route first

Before paying anyone: Google removes your contact details and government ID numbers at no cost through its own tool. It will not remove an arrest record, so it is not the answer to this page — but it is free, it takes minutes, and it clears a category of result people often assume they have to buy their way out of.

Open Google’s Results about you tool

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.