As part of its “results about you” function, Google will be able to warn you if your personal information, such as your phone number, email address, or home address, appears in search results starting “early next year.” The news comes as Google has officially begun rolling out the tool, which allows users to simply make removal requests for results containing personal information. Last week, some individuals began to see the tool.
According to a tweet from the corporation, the notification system would be opt-in. Ideally, most individuals will not have to enable it; nonetheless, having the choice will be useful, particularly for those in high-profile positions or who are targeted by harassment campaigns.
Today, we're rolling out the “Results about you” tool for Google Search, making it easy to request the removal of search results that lead to content with personally identifying information, such as your personal phone number, home address or email address… pic.twitter.com/8D4eZ3Jftv
— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) September 28, 2022
It is important to emphasize, however, that Google is simply removing search results, not whole websites. The material will remain on whichever site is hosting it, but it will be more difficult to discover.
Google has been allowing individuals to request that this kind of search result be removed for some time now (and has had the capacity for results that were intentionally harassing or threatening for much longer), but it is aiming to make the procedure much simpler to access. Instead of needing to search Google’s dedicated help page with the link to the form, the results about you tool allows you to mark results containing your personal information with a few button pushes.
It also allows you to keep track of such requests. When alerts begin next year, it will be much more powerful since you won’t have to manually search out potentially damaging results to report them.
