The right to be forgotten lets people in the EU and UK ask search engines to delist results about them that are outdated, irrelevant or excessive, unless the public interest outweighs it.
The Court of Justice of the EU recognised the right in Google Spain v AEPD and Costeja González (C-131/12, 13 May 2014), holding that search engines process personal data and must, on request, remove links from searches for a person's name where the information is inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant, or excessive. It now forms part of the right to erasure in Article 17 of the GDPR, and the UK keeps an equivalent right under the UK GDPR.
Each request is a balancing test. The search engine weighs the person's privacy against the public's interest in the information, considering the person's role in public life, the age and accuracy of the information, and whether it concerns criminal matters. Delisting removes the link from name searches in Europe; it does not delete the page. In Google v CNIL (C-507/17, 2019) the Court held that EU law does not require worldwide delisting.
In practice
A strong request explains why the result is no longer relevant — an acquittal, a spent conviction, an old story about a private person, a role you no longer hold — and backs it with evidence. If the search engine refuses, you can complain to your national data protection authority or go to court. The right comes from EU and UK law and is assessed for European searches; there is no general equivalent in US law.
Source: CJEU, Case C-131/12, Google Spain v AEPD (13 May 2014) ↗
Related removals
- Right to be forgotten — $1,500 per URL, pay on success
- News article removal — $1,500 per URL, pay on success
- SERP de-indexing — $1,500 per URL, pay on success
Related terms
- GDPR Article 17 — GDPR Article 17 is the EU right to erasure: people can require an organisation to delete their personal data when a ground listed in the law applies and no exception overrides it.
- SERP de-indexing — SERP de-indexing is the removal of a specific URL from search engine results pages, so it stops appearing in searches even though the page itself may still exist.
- Outdated content removal — Outdated content removal is asking a search engine to update or drop a result whose page has already been deleted or changed, so the old title and snippet stop appearing.
- Source removal — Source removal means deleting content where it is actually published — on the website, platform or server that hosts it — rather than only hiding it from search results.