Overshared online? How the “right to be forgotten” can help

Oversharing online has become a common issue in today's digital world, with people often sharing personal details that are hard to erase. The saying "once it's on the internet, it's forever" highlights the permanent nature of such disclosures. Nevertheless, personal data can appear on the internet not only due to intentional oversharing but also because of factors beyond individual control. While the "right to be forgotten" allows removal requests in the search engines, it only applies in your region (e.g., EU). Data that has been requested to be delisted will still be visible elsewhere. It's important to remember that casual oversharing can also lead to serious cybercrimes, including financial damage or identity theft.

Key insights

• In 2024, Google received close to 180,000 requests to delist content from its search results for privacy reasons, reflecting a 10% rise from the previous year. Individuals have the right to ask search engines like Google to delist certain results for queries based on a person’s name.¹ Each request can encompass multiple URLs, and the total number of URLs requested for delisting surged by nearly 40% compared to 2023, surpassing 800,000 URLs. This averages to approximately 5 URLs per request.
• Based on the number of requests or URLs for delisting, the top five countries accounted for 70% of total submissions to Google in 2024. Leading the way were requesters from Sweden, with over 36,000 requests encompassing nearly 200,000 URLs. France followed with over 37,000 requests or more than 110,000 URLs. The United Kingdom submitted nearly 16,000 requests, involving over 100,000 URLs, while Germany had almost 24,000 requests with more than 100,000 URLs. Italy completed the list with nearly 11,000 requests, indicating virtually 60,000 URLs for delisting.
• Google classifies URLs based on the type of website that hosts the content, such as news outlets, social media platforms, government sites, or others. The most notable increase in requested URLs for delisting was observed in the Directory category — websites that function as directories or aggregators of information, such as postal addresses or phone numbers for businesses or individuals. The numbers in this category skyrocketed 2.5 times in 2024 compared to 2023. Interestingly, nearly 80% or 130,000 of these URLs were requested by individuals from Sweden. However, the specific domains most impacted in 2024 remain unknown due to limited filtering options available for the data.
• Google also categorizes URLs by content type, including those related to the requester’s professional life, self-authored information, references to criminal activity, or others. Swedes took the lead in requesting the removal of content from search results, with Personal information being the top category — over 60,000 URLs, accounting for 31.9% of their total requested URLs in 2024, were evaluated for delisting. This category includes content featuring the requester's personal address, residence, contact details, images and/or videos of the individual, or other non-sensitive personal information.¹ Following Sweden, the United Kingdom had over 7,000 URLs evaluated in the Personal information category, making up 7.2% of their total requests in 2024. France also had over 7,000 URLs, representing 6.3%, while Germany had nearly 7,000 URLs at 6.6%.
• Over 60% of requested URLs in 2024 were successfully delisted. However, this figure does not include requests still under review or those needing more information to process. While the delisting rate for the Personal information category was notably high at 99% in 2024, it's important to remember the content itself isn't removed from the internet — it's simply delisted from search results, and this applies only to specific territories.

Methodology and sources

Data was collected on February 20, 2025. Google compiles its data on received requests to delist content under European privacy law and the total number of URLs for delisting search results cumulatively every Sunday. To determine the total number of requests and URLs for delisting, the following date ranges were selected: January 1, 2023 and December 31, 2023 for the year 2023; December 31, 2023 and December 29, 2024 for the year 2024. To calculate the totals, the value from the last week of one year was subtracted from the value of a specific week of the following year. This method means the data may not fully represent the entire year.

Note: When calculating URLs by website categories or content categories, as well as URLs that were delisted or not delisted, data filtering options were available for the periods from January 1, 2023, to December 31, 2023, and January 1, 2024, to December 31, 2024, and these were utilized.

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