Google's AI Overviews — the AI-generated summaries that appear at the top of search results — can sometimes surface personal information about you, including your address, phone number, workplace, and other details pulled from across the web. Unlike traditional search results that link to source pages, AI Overviews present this information directly, making your personal data even more accessible. Here's how to take control and get your information removed.
How Google AI Overviews Expose Your Personal Data
Google's AI Overviews synthesize information from multiple sources across the internet to generate direct answers to search queries. When someone searches for your name, the AI may compile and display:
- Your home address and previous addresses
- Phone numbers and email addresses
- Your employer and job title
- Social media profiles and public posts
- Information from data broker and people-search sites
- Public records, court filings, and property records
- News articles or blog posts mentioning you
The concern is that AI Overviews don't just link to this information — they aggregate and present it in a concise, easy-to-read format. This makes it trivially easy for someone to get a comprehensive picture of your personal details without visiting multiple websites.
AI Overviews Are Different From Regular Search Results
Removing a traditional search result only removes one link. But AI Overviews pull from many sources at once, so you need to address the underlying data — not just the search result — to truly protect your privacy.
Step 1: Use Google's "Results About You" Tool
Google has expanded its "Results about you" tool to give users more control over personal information appearing in search, including AI Overviews. Here's how to use it:
- Open the Google app or go to google.com and sign into your Google account
- Tap your profile photo and select "Results about you"
- If it's your first time, tap "Get started"
- Add the personal information you want to monitor: phone numbers, email addresses, home address
- You can also add government ID numbers like your Social Security number, driver's license, or passport number
Once configured, Google will automatically scan search results and notify you if it finds results containing your personal information. You can then request removal of those results directly from the tool.
What Google Will Remove
Google has stated it will remove search results (including AI Overview content) that contain:
- Phone numbers and email addresses
- Home addresses
- Social Security numbers, driver's license numbers, and passport numbers
- Bank account and credit card numbers
- Handwritten signatures
- Medical records
- Non-consensual explicit images
What Google Won't Remove
Google generally won't remove information that appears in news articles, public government records, or content that has a legitimate public interest. If you're a public figure, removal requests may be more limited.
Step 2: Remove the Source Data
Here's the critical insight: removing a Google result doesn't remove the data from the internet. The AI Overview pulls from source websites, and if those sources still have your information, it can reappear in future AI-generated summaries. You need to address the root cause.
Remove Your Data From Data Broker Sites
People-search and data broker sites are among the primary sources that Google's AI draws from when generating personal information summaries. Sites like Spokeo, Whitepages, BeenVerified, PeopleSearchNow, and hundreds of others make your data available for the AI to aggregate.
Opting out of these sites individually is possible but time-consuming. A service like PrivacyOn automates the removal process across 100+ data broker sites, which directly reduces the amount of personal data available for Google's AI to surface.
Adjust Social Media Privacy Settings
Google's AI also pulls from social media profiles. Review and tighten your privacy settings on:
- Facebook — Set your profile to private and limit who can find you via search
- LinkedIn — Control your public profile visibility and search engine indexing
- Instagram, X (Twitter), and other platforms — Review what information is publicly visible
Skip the manual opt-outs
One opt-out won't stop them — brokers relist your data. PrivacyOn removes your info from 100+ sites and keeps it removed.
See where you're exposed — free 60-second scanStep 3: Request Removal of Specific URLs
For specific pages that contain your personal information:
- Contact the website owner directly and request removal of your data
- Once the content is removed from the source site, use Google's Remove Outdated Content tool to request that Google update its cache
- If the content poses a safety risk and the website won't remove it, file a legal removal request through Google's support pages
How to Turn Off AI Overviews Entirely
If you want to stop seeing AI Overviews in your own Google searches, you can use the "Web" filter to get traditional results only, install browser extensions that hide AI Overviews, or switch to a privacy-focused search engine like DuckDuckGo or Brave Search. Note that this only affects your experience — others searching for you will still see AI Overviews.
Step 4: Set Up Ongoing Monitoring
AI Overviews are constantly updated as Google recrawls the web. Even after successful removal, your information can reappear if new sources emerge or old ones are re-indexed. Set up ongoing monitoring to stay ahead:
- Google Alerts — Create alerts for your full name, phone number, and address to get notified when new content appears
- Google's "Results about you" — Keep this tool active so Google proactively flags new results containing your personal data
- PrivacyOn's 24/7 monitoring — PrivacyOn continuously scans data broker sites and alerts you to new listings, addressing the source data that feeds into AI Overviews
Why This Matters More Than Ever
As AI search becomes the default way people find information, the stakes for personal privacy increase dramatically. Traditional search required someone to click through multiple links and piece together information from different sources. AI Overviews do that work automatically, presenting a comprehensive summary of your personal data in seconds.
An estimated 90% of online content may be synthetically generated or AI-processed by the end of 2026, according to Europol projections. As AI becomes more integrated into search, taking proactive steps to control your personal data at the source — rather than just managing search results — is the most effective long-term strategy.
PrivacyOn helps you do exactly that. By removing your data from 100+ data broker sites and monitoring for re-listings around the clock, PrivacyOn reduces the raw material that AI search engines draw from when generating summaries about you. Combined with Google's own removal tools, this two-pronged approach gives you the best chance of keeping your personal information out of AI-generated search results.