Google has announced the addition of more privacy and online safety features for Google Search, designed to help you better control the personal information that appears online.
Last year, Google launched the Results about you tool to make it easy for you to request the removal of search results that contain your personal phone number, home address or e-mail, right from the Google app or however you access Search. Google has updated and improved the tool to further help you keep track of your personal contact information in Search and alert you when personal information is found so you can get it removed if desired.
Google will soon be rolling out a new dashboard that will let you know if web results with your contact information are showing up on Search. Then, you can quickly request the removal of those results from Google, right in the tool. Google will also notify you when new results from the web containing your contact info pop up in Search.
You can access this tool in the Google app by clicking on your Google account photo and selecting “Results about you,” or by visiting goo.gle/resultsaboutyou. This tool is available in the U.S. in English to start, but Google says it is working to bring it to new languages and locations soon.
Earlier this year, Google announced a new safeguard that helps protect you and your family from inadvertently encountering explicit imagery on Search. With this update, explicit imagery, such as adult or graphic violent content, will now be blurred by default when it appears in Search results.
The new SafeSearch blurring setting is rolling out for all users globally this month. You can adjust your settings and turn it off at any time, unless a guardian or school network administrator has locked the setting.
Google is also making it easier to find parental controls directly in Search. Type in a relevant query like “google parental controls” or “google family link” and you will see a box with information on how to manage your parental controls.
Along with its existing policies that enable you to remove non-consensual explicit imagery from Search, Google is building on these protections to enable people to remove from Search any of their personal, explicit images that they no longer wish to be visible in Search. For example, if you created and uploaded explicit content to a website, then deleted it, you can request its removal from Search if it’s being published elsewhere without approval. This policy doesn’t apply to content you are currently commercializing.
More broadly, whether it’s for websites containing personal information, explicit imagery, or any other removal requests, Google has updated and simplified the forms you use to submit requests. Google points out that removing content from Google Search does not remove it from the web or other search engines. “But we hope these changes give you more control over private information appearing in Google Search,” says the company.
“These new tools and updates,” Google continues, “are some of the many ways we’re continuing to make Google the safest way to Search.”