Remove personal information from Google search

-Hi, I'm Natali Del Conte for CNET and I'm here to show you how to get your personal information off of Google search results. This is a complicated question with a bit of a complicated answer, but we're gonna try and break it down for you. When someone asks, "How do you get something off of Google?" Usually they mean either their personal contact information or else removing a search result for a site that mentions them unfavorably. The first type is easier. Remember that Google Index is everything that is on the internet. So the best way to keep your personal information private is just not to ever publish it. That includes on your Facebook or Flickr albums or any other social networking site. To set that in Facebook, go to account and then privacy settings and set your contact information to be viewable by friends only. This way, Google can't see it when it crawls the web. If there is information about you on a website that you don't want publish, you can contact the owner of that site and ask them to remove it. Good luck with that. If they won't, a lot of times that's the case, then you're kind of out of luck. Your best hope is that people won't read that site often and it will be move down the search results as more relevant results are read and clicked on. Unless the information in question has your social security number, bank account, or other sensitive information in which case you can notify Google of this through their customer service page. If the owner of a site agrees to remove information, you are in luck. That information will not show up in Google results once Google re-indexes the web which they do periodically. If this has not happen fast enough for you, you can request that Google remove it by visiting the site google.com/webmasters/tools/removals and then you will request a new removal. Your best bet to avoid these headaches is to practice prudence when disclosing information about yourself online. Of course, there will always be people, who are being unpleasant on the internet, but at the very least, you can just not be one of them. I'm Natali Del Conte for CNET.