Somewhere between a bad decade-old headline and a data broker profile with your home address on it, most people eventually ask the same question. Can I actually make this disappear from the internet?
The phrase people usually reach for is “right to be forgotten.” It sounds like a universal privacy right, something anyone, anywhere, can invoke against Google or a website that won’t take a page down.
It isn’t universal. It’s a specific legal mechanism, born from a specific court case, that applies in specific places, under specific conditions. Understanding where it actually applies and what exists instead if you’re outside that scope matters more than the phrase itself.
Where the Right to Be Forgotten Actually Began in Europe
The right to be forgotten traces back to a single 2014 case. A Spanish man named Mario Costeja González asked Google to delist a decades-old newspaper notice about a debt he had long since resolved.
The Court of Justice of the European Union ruled in his favor, establishing that search engines act as data controllers and can be required to delist search results tied to a person’s name when that information is inaccurate, outdated, or no longer relevant.
Four years later, the EU folded that principle into law. Article 17 of the GDPR codified a narrower version called the right to erasure, giving individuals in the EU and EEA a formal, enforceable path to request that their personal data be deleted or delisted.
That’s the mechanism people are usually referring to, even when they use the older, broader phrase.
What the Right to Be Forgotten Actually Covers and Excludes
The right to be forgotten is not the same as the right to privacy. Privacy law protects information that was never public. This right addresses information that was public and lawfully published, but has since become disproportionate to keep surfacing.
It applies primarily to search engine delisting, not to erasing the underlying content itself. A successful request removes a URL from name-based search results. The original page, the news article, the court record, the blog post, usually stays online exactly where it was.
That distinction trips people up constantly. Delisting a result from a Google search does not delete the source page, and a request granted against one search engine doesn’t automatically apply to every other index, directory, or archive that might have copied the content.
The Balancing Test That Google Uses to Decide Every Request
Every request runs through a weighing exercise. Google, and any data controller subject to GDPR, has to balance an individual’s privacy interest against the public’s interest in the information staying accessible. A handful of factors consistently decide which way that balance tips.
1. How Closely and Directly the Information Relates to Someone’s Public Role
Google’s own transparency guidance explains that the more directly information relates to someone’s public role, the less likely it is to be delisted. A private detail about an architect’s personal life is more likely to come down than criticism of their professional performance.
2. How Senior or Influential the Person’s Actual Public Position Is
The more senior or influential a person’s public position, the stronger the presumption against delisting. Search engines are direct on this point: it will be extremely rare for information about a sitting head of government to be removed.
3. How Much Time Has Passed Since the Public Role Ended
How long ago someone left a public role matters. If they’re likely to return to public life or remain influential in another capacity, information about their past role tends to stay indexed for historical accuracy.
4. Whether the Criminal History Involved Is Now Considered Legally Resolved
Requests tied to spent convictions, exonerations, or acquittals are treated more favorably. Search engines generally weigh in favor of delisting content connected to a conviction that’s legally considered resolved, factoring in the age of the content and the nature of the offense.
5. Whether an Alternative Removal Path Already Exists at the Source
If a person published the content themselves, or has another straightforward way to get it removed at the source, that reduces the likelihood that delisting from search is granted as a separate remedy.
The Numbers Behind Millions of Global Delisting Requests Worldwide
The scale of this mechanism is larger than most people expect. In its first five years alone, Google received roughly 3.2 million requests to delist URLs, submitted by about 502,000 individual requesters.
Of the URLs evaluated during that window, 45% ultimately met the criteria for delisting. The remaining majority were declined, usually because the public interest test outweighed the privacy claim.
Volume has stayed high and steady. After an intense first year, requests settled into a pattern of roughly 47,000 per month, and the average decision time dropped sharply, from 85 days in 2014 down to about 6 days by 2019.
Requests aren’t evenly distributed across requesters, either. The top 10,000 requesters, out of roughly half a million total, accounted for 34% of all URL requests, meaning a small group of people and their representatives drive a disproportionate share of activity.
By content type, professional information is the single most targeted category, making up 24% of requests, ahead of personal information, criminal history, and political criticism combined.
Geography skews heavily toward a few countries. Between 2015 and 2022, France alone accounted for nearly 299,000 requests submitted to Google and Bing, the highest total of any European country, with Germany and the UK following behind it. In a single recent year, more than 155,000 requests were submitted across the region, underscoring how routine this process has become for European residents.
Why the Global Reach of This Right Has Firm Limits
One of the most consequential rulings in this area answered a question that seems obvious in hindsight: does a European delisting order apply everywhere, or just in Europe?
In 2019, the Court of Justice of the European Union decided that it applies only within the EU. Search engines are required to delist qualifying results on their European domains, but they are not obligated to apply that same delisting globally, including on versions of the search engine accessed from outside Europe.
That limitation matters for anyone assuming a European removal automatically scrubs a result worldwide. It doesn’t. A page delisted for a French search of someone’s name can still appear in identical form to someone searching the same name from outside the EU.
Does This Right Actually Apply to People in the US
This is where most of the confusion sits for anyone based in the United States. The short answer is direct: the United States has no federal right to be forgotten, and no federal equivalent to the GDPR’s right to erasure.
There is no formal legal process for an American to invoke against Google demanding a name-based delisting the way a resident of France or Germany can. Search engines maintain their own voluntary removal policies for specific categories, doxxing, non-consensual imagery, and certain personal information, but that’s a company policy, not a codified legal right.
That gap is why “right to be forgotten” circulates so widely online among Americans researching this topic, often without the legal backing that actually exists behind the phrase in Europe. It’s a real right; it’s just not one most people in the US can currently exercise as a matter of federal law.
The Closest Alternatives Available to Residents of the United States
The absence of a federal right doesn’t mean there’s nothing available. A handful of overlapping tools fill in pieces of the gap, mostly at the state level and through platform-specific policy.
1. California’s Deletion Right Under the CCPA and CPRA Explained
California is the closest thing the US has to a GDPR-style mechanism. Under the CCPA and its expansion, the CPRA, residents can request that a business delete personal information it holds about them, along with directing service providers to do the same.
2. California’s Brand New DROP Platform for Centralized Deletion Requests
California recently centralized part of this process. The Delete Request and Opt-Out Platform, or DROP, launched through the California Privacy Protection Agency on January 1, 2026, letting residents submit a single deletion request that applies across every registered data broker in the state at once.
3. Other State Privacy Laws That Include Their Own Deletion Rights
A growing number of states outside California have passed comparable consumer privacy laws with their own deletion rights, though coverage, exceptions, and enforcement mechanisms vary considerably from state to state, and none currently match the scope of the GDPR.
4. Google’s Own Policy Tools for Removing Certain Types of Content
Separate from any legal right, Google maintains its own removal request system for specific categories of content, regardless of where the requester lives. This includes non-consensual explicit imagery, doxxing content, and certain sensitive personal information, and it operates as company policy rather than statute.
5. Data Broker Opt-Outs That Handle Most of the Real Exposure
The bulk of what shows up when someone searches their own name in the US often comes from data broker sites rather than news coverage or search engine indexing decisions. Most brokers maintain their own opt-out processes, separate from any government-run system.
What You Can Actually Do Depending on Where You Live
For anyone in the EU or EEA, the process runs through a search engine’s official removal form, where you identify the specific URLs, explain the connection to your identity, and make the case for why the information no longer serves a legitimate public interest.
For anyone in the US, the more realistic path is a layered one. Start by identifying whether a result qualifies for Google’s policy-based removal tools, then separately pursue opt-outs across the data broker sites that are actually generating most of the exposure.
Removal from any of these channels tends to be temporary rather than permanent. Broker listings repopulate as public records update, which is why monitoring your name periodically matters as much as the initial removal request itself.
For content that goes beyond a data broker listing, defamatory claims, coordinated fake complaints, or harassment-adjacent posts, the removal grounds shift toward platform policy violations and, in more serious cases, legal escalation rather than a privacy request alone.
Closing Thoughts on a Right That Isn’t Truly Universal Yet
The right to be forgotten is a real, enforceable legal mechanism, but it belongs to a specific jurisdiction with a specific process behind it. Outside the EU and EEA, the phrase describes an aspiration more than a filing you can make.
That doesn’t leave US residents and businesses without options. It just means the path runs through a combination of state privacy law, platform policy, data broker opt-outs, and, where the content crosses into defamation or harassment, direct legal action, rather than one single unified request.
Nadernejad Media Inc. works with individuals and businesses navigating exactly this landscape, combining name and data broker removal strategy with the kind of proactive reputation monitoring that keeps a single outdated result from defining how someone is found online, long after any formal removal request has run its course.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Can Americans file a right to be forgotten request with Google?
Not through any federal legal process, since no federal right to be forgotten currently exists in the US; the realistic path combines state deletion laws, Google’s policy-based removal tools, and direct data broker opt-outs.
2. Does GDPR’s right to erasure ever apply to US citizens?
GDPR’s right to erasure generally applies based on where the data processing occurs and who the data controller is, so an American whose information is processed by an EU-based company may have standing, though this varies by case and isn’t guaranteed simply by nationality.
3. How long do these removal requests typically take to resolve
Google’s policy-based removals for categories like doxxing or personal information typically resolve within days to a few weeks, while data broker opt-outs move more slowly and often need to be repeated as listings regenerate from public records.
4. What percentage of all delisting requests actually succeed each year?
Historical data from Google’s first five years under the ruling shows roughly 45% of evaluated URLs met the criteria for delisting, with the majority of declined requests failing the public interest balancing test rather than a technical defect in the filing.
5. Is the deletion of content the same thing as delisting it?
No, delisting removes a URL from name-based search results while the source page typically remains live at its original location, which is why a full removal strategy usually needs to address both the search visibility layer and the underlying content separately.
