How do I remove my personal information from Google search results?

Step 1: find what’s out there

Search for your full name, your name with your suburb, your phone numbers, email addresses and home address. Use a private browser window so results aren’t personalised. Check image results too. Note each web address that bothers you.

Step 2: remove it at the source

Google indexes what’s online. If you remove the page, it eventually disappears from Bing and other search engines as well.

• Your own old accounts: log in and delete or lock them down.
• Other websites: contact the site owner and ask them to remove or update the information. Be specific about the page and why.
• Organisations: under the Privacy Act, a New Zealand organisation should only publish your information with a proper basis, and you can complain to the Privacy Commissioner if it won’t fix something harmful.
• Public registers: in New Zealand, the biggest sources of home addresses are councils’ rates databases, the electoral roll and the Companies Register. You can ask your council to withhold your name (how), apply for the unpublished electoral roll if you’re at risk, and, from 18 November 2026, apply for an alternative address if you’re a director with safety concerns.

Step 3: ask Google to remove results

Google accepts requests to remove results that contain certain personal information, including:

• contact details such as your phone number, email address or home address
• identity numbers, bank or card details, and login credentials
• intimate images shared without consent, and sexual deepfakes
• content on sites with exploitative removal practices

Google’s “Results about you” tool lets you find and request removal of results with your contact details, and alerts you to new ones. If it isn’t available in your account or country, use Google’s removal request form instead. Google decides each request against its policies; newsworthy or public-interest information is less likely to be removed.

Bing has its own removal process.

Step 4: keep it down

• Lock down social media and remove old public posts.
• Use a PO Box or work address for anything published.
• Work through our personal exposure audit, and repeat it every six months.

There’s no general right to be forgotten

New Zealand law doesn’t give you a general right to have information deleted or delisted on request. See is there a right to be forgotten in New Zealand?.