How do you remove harmful information from Google?

Citizens of the European Union can ask search engines (such as Google) to remove from their index certain information that is inappropriate, irrelevant, or excessive concerning them or another person. You can also remove stolen content from certain sites from the index by exercising your rights under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

False or defamatory content

Deleting information from Google

When it comes to people, the right to be forgotten applies. That is, you can try to remove outdated or excessive information (images, clips, texts, etc.) from the organic search results for free, about the purpose for which they were processed. According to European law, search engines are obliged to remove from the results provided links with irrelevant or excessive information about an identifiable person. However, defining some information as irrelevant or excessive is problematic. That is why it is often necessary to rely on the good intentions of the Google team, or on the decision of a court (a process that can take time).

However, it's important to understand that that information remains online, it just won't show up in Google results.

Who does not have the right to submit such a request?

The right to be forgotten does not apply if the role played by that person in public life is justified by the public's overriding interest in having access to them through search engines.

The right to be forgotten does not apply if the role played by that person in public life is justified by the overriding interest. Also, companies cannot submit a request in this regard. To solve these cases we recommend the service of cleaning the results of Google.

Form to be completed by EU citizens: https://reportcontent.google.com/forms/rtbf?visit_id=638048005262777139-2522407031&hl=en&rd=1

Stolen content

When it comes to stolen content, you can submit a takedown notice for the URL of the allegedly infringing material. When Google receives a valid takedown notice, its team carefully checks that it is complete and free of any other issues. If the complaint is confirmed, the reported URL is removed from the search results.

What can be done to protect yourself from intellectual property theft online? Submit a DMCA takedown notice where the site is hosted: https://lookup.icann.org/en/lookup

It is also important to know that there are hosts that ignore DMCA complaints.

DMCA complaint is filed with Google here: https://support.google.com/legal/troubleshooter/1114905?hl=en to notify and request the removal of infringing content from Google. If the claim is verified, they will remove the content from their search engine results. This means that the given page will no longer be listed in Google. If it's the entire website, with all the stolen content, you'll have to repeat the process for each page.

Also, you should know that Google frequently receives requests to remove content from search results that may or may not infringe copyright.

If the Google team finds that the said sites have not infringed copyright in any way, they will not remove those URLs from Google search. Reasons for refusing to remove URLs include: not having enough information about how the URL is allegedly infringing, not being able to find the allegedly infringing content, etc.