As you know, the EU's top court has required Google to enable people to force Google to take down personal information about themselves. This obviously is something that Google is not happy about but they had to and have complied.
Google created a form, located over here that you can fill out to request Google to take down information from their search results. It currently only works in the 28 European Union countries and then four other countries Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland.
The form itself asks for a ton of information, making sure it isn't the easiest thing to fill out but at the same time, helping Google figure out of the request is legit or not.
The form reads at the top:
A recent ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union found that certain users can ask search engines to remove results for queries that include their name where those results are inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant, or excessive in relation to the purposes for which they were processed.In implementing this decision, we will assess each individual request and attempt to balance the privacy rights of the individual with the public’s right to know and distribute information. When evaluating your request, we will look at whether the results include outdated information about you, as well as whether there’s a public interest in the information—for example, information about financial scams, professional malpractice, criminal convictions, or public conduct of government officials.
If you have a removal request, please fill out the form below. Please note that this form is an initial effort. We look forward to working closely with data protection authorities and others over the coming months as we refine our approach.
Here is a picture of the form in the current state, I suspect it will change over time:
In the first day alone, 12,000 submissions were made to the form. Danny has a much more detailed write up about the form if you are interested.
One senior member at WebmasterWorld felt the form is asking for way too much information:
Anyone looked at the form? Asks for a boatload of personal information to make sure they ... g ... know EXACTLY who they are to "remove" from the serps. Wonder how many will supply that info. Then again, they have to do that because any Tom, Dick, or Harry could make a demand... and it might not be Tom, Dick, or Harry!
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld & Google+.
