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Right To Be Forgotten Won’t Happen On Google.com

Barry Schwartz on June 10, 2014 at 12:05 pm

Many searchers and Google users are asking, will the Right To Be Forgotten form be a feature and option coming to the U.S. on Google.com. The answer is no!

A few weeks ago, Google told us the removals will only be available in the European Union, that is until the U.S. government and court finds a way to legally require the same procedure in the U.S., which is unlikely.

Google told us that the removals won’t pull a URL out of Google worldwide, that it only will impact the EU based results. So if you get content removed via the form, if you search in the EU, that content will not be found, but if you search in the U.S. or most other non EU based countries, that content will be found.

For example, say someone from the United Kingdom puts in a request that’s approved. The URL will be dropped out of Google UK, in that person’s home country. But it will also be dropped out of Google France, Google Germany, Google Spain and other versions of Google for individual EU countries.

In contrast, the URL would not be dropped from Google.com. Anyone going to Google.com, whether in the U.S. or EU, will still see the URLs. Removals will only be done from the EU versions.

Also, it seems likely that those going to particular EU versions from outside the EU would still see the URLs. For example, if you were in the U.S. and went to Google UK, in the scenario above, you might still see the URLs. I’m double-checking on this.

In addition, as we covered again yesterday, content removals in the U.S. will be disclosed to the searcher.

For more on the topic of “Right To Be Forgotten”, see our stories below:

About The Author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on SEM topics.