Removal Policies

We want to organize the world’s information, but some content on the web is sensitive or not appropriate for everyone to see. This page explains our policies for different types of content that Google will remove from web, image or video results.

Personal information
Offensive images

Personal information

Upon request, we’ll remove personal information if we believe it could make a user susceptible to specific harm, such as identity theft or financial fraud.

Types of information we might remove include:

  • National identification numbers like U.S. Social Security Numbers
  • Bank account numbers
  • Credit card numbers
  • Images of signatures

Types of information we will not remove include:

  • A user’s date of birth
  • A user's address
  • A user's telephone number

In order to determine whether a particular form of identification is considered sensitive, we apply criteria such as the following:

  • Is it a government-issued identification number?
  • Is it confidential, or is it publicly available information?
  • Can it be used for certain common financial transactions?
  • Can it be used to obtain more information about an individual?

We apply this removals policy on a case-by-case basis. We usually don’t remove this information from official government websites because, in those cases, we consider the information to be public. We sometimes refuse requests if we believe someone is attempting to abuse these policies to remove other information from our results.

Request to have personal information removed

To request to have personal information removed from Google search results, visit this page to remove information from Google.

Offensive images

Sometimes, images and videos can be offensive, especially if you haven’t specifically asked for them in your search results. Depending on the situation, we may take one of these three actions:

  • Removing images and videos from search results
  • Not triggering certain search features that show images and videos automatically
  • Filtering objectionable content through SafeSearch if you have it turned on in your account

Removals

We remove images or videos from our search results if they include:

  • Personal information, as described above
  • Child sexual abuse imagery

We also remove images and videos for legal reasons, such as valid copyright notifications that meet the requirements of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Not showing image and video thumbnails in Web Search results

We may remove images or videos, or prevent them from showing in search results if the content contains:

  • Pornography, including search queries with multiple meanings and search queries that are not offensive but could have offensive results
  • Bodily functions or bodily fluids 
  • Vulgar words
  • Graphic content, including: injuries and medical conditions, depictions of death and human body parts
  • Animal cruelty or violence

SafeSearch Filtering

When SafeSearch is turned on in your Google Account, it primarily filters pornographic images.

With SafeSearch, we filter images and videos that contain:

  • Frontal nudity
  • Graphic sex or sexual acts
  • Artistic images and videos that focus on genitals or graphic sex 

We do not filter images or videos that contain:

  • Nudity that is medical, scientific or educational. For example, images of breastfeeding babies
  • A focus on a bare or scantily clad buttocks
  • Content where genitals are not the focus. For example, depictions of the Kama Sutra
  • Content depicting sexual fetishes and sexual themes that does not include nudity. For example, pop stars dressed in bondage gear.

SafeSearch does not automatically filter for violent content. In cases of extremely graphic violence, we may manually filter those kinds of images.