How to see what the internet says about you

To see what the internet says about you, search your own name the way a stranger would: logged out, in quotation marks, then with your employer and your city, and in image results. Note every page that mentions you. Then fix the ones you control, ask other sites to correct or remove the rest, and use Google's Results about you for results that show your home address, phone number or email address.

Your digital footprint is everything you leave online, from posts and profiles to the data apps collect in the background. This guide covers how to check your digital footprint where it counts most: the pages people find when they search your name. All you need is a browser.

Why check your own name

Asking what the internet knows about you is not vanity. People look you up before they deal with you: a new client before a first call, an employer before an interview, a journalist before quoting you. What they find shapes their first impression, and you may never hear what they saw.

Checking first lets you catch the problems that are easiest to fix:

• Out-of-date pages, such as an old team page that still lists a job you left.
• Someone else with your name, whose profile or news story a stranger could take for yours.
• Contact details you never meant to publish, such as a home address on a directory or a people search site.
• Forgotten accounts that are still public.

A formal background check, for a job or a lease, is a different thing with its own legal rules. Our guide on whether it is legal to look someone up explains the difference.

Search your name the way others do

Googling yourself properly takes more than one search. Start with Google, then repeat the main searches in Bing, because each shows its own results. Note each page that mentions you, what it says and who runs the site. That list becomes your to-do list.

Log out first, or use a private window

When you are logged in, Google can tailor results to you. Its page on personalisation in Google Search says that with Personalized Recommendations on, it uses your Google Account activity, which can change the order of results. Nobody else sees results tailored to your account, so log out, or open a private window: in Chrome's Incognito mode, Chrome doesn't log you in to your Google Account or other sites automatically. Google still uses location, language and device, so someone in another city may not see exactly what you see.

Put your name in quotation marks

Google's guide to refining searches says that a word or phrase inside quotes searches for an exact match. So "Sam Okafor" finds pages with that name as a phrase, not pages that mention a Sam in one place and an Okafor in another. Try every version of your name someone might use: with and without a middle name or initial, a nickname, and any previous surname.

Add your employer, your city and your work

Next, search the quoted name with one extra detail at a time: your employer (current and past), your city, your job title, your school, or a project or talk you are known for. To check one site, such as a former employer's, add site: and its address, as in "Sam Okafor" site:example.com, with no space after the colon. Look past the first page of results, and use the News filter to find articles that mention you.

These are the same habits you would use to look up anyone else. Our guide to finding someone online covers common names and how to tell namesakes apart.

Check image results

Switch to the Images filter and scroll through what appears for your name. Then search with a photo of yourself, such as your profile picture. Google's guide to searching with an image says the results can include websites with the image or a similar image, which can show where your photo has been reused.

Search your usernames, email address and phone number

Search each username you have used, old ones included, and put your personal email address and phone number in quotation marks too. If your contact details turn up on pages you don't recognise, add them to your list. Google has a tool for exactly those results, covered below.

Check your public profiles and old accounts

Next, look at the accounts you run, because nobody else can fix them for you. Google's policy for Results about you says it won't remove information you can take down yourself, such as a social media page or a personal blog that you own.

• Privacy settings. On each network, check who can see your posts, photos, connections and contact details. Where the network lets you, view your profile as a stranger would.
• Old bios. Update the short descriptions of you on profiles, personal websites, speaker pages and author pages, so they show what you do now.
• Old accounts and usernames. Delete or lock accounts you no longer use. A reused username ties accounts together, so rename or close an old one you would rather keep apart from your work. Google's page on removing content outside Google Search links to the help centres of Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Reddit and other platforms.

Use Google's "Results about you"

Results about you is Google's own tool for finding and removing personal information in Google Search. You give it your name and the details to look for, such as your home address, phone number and email address, and it checks Google Search for results that show them. Turn on notifications, by email or in the Google app, and Google tells you when new results match.

To use it, log in to your Google Account and open Results about you, or in the Google app, tap your profile picture and choose Results about you. Matches appear in a "To review" tab, where you can ask Google to remove a result, and Google emails you about each request. You can also start from an ordinary search: click More next to a result to open "About this result", then choose Remove result. Google says some of these features are still rolling out, for users over 18 in certain markets.

What it can remove

It handles results that show your phone number, home address or email address, when the details are your personal information and sit on a page you don't control. Google's wider policy on removing private information also covers confidential government ID numbers, bank account and card numbers, images of your signature or ID, private records such as medical records, and doxxing, through a separate request form.

What it can't remove

• Results Google treats as valuable to the public. Google names government and educational websites, online newspapers and business websites. For those, there is no remove option.
• Information you control, such as your own social media pages or blog.
• Professional details, unless they were posted to harm you. Google handles those through its detailed removal request form.
• The page itself. An approved request hides the result in Google Search, sometimes only for searches that include your name. Google is clear that the information still exists on the source page.

So Results about you cleans up Google's results, not the web. For the page itself, go to the site that published it.

What a people search shows about you

People search sites put public information about a person in one place, so searching your own name on one shows what a stranger using it would see. On Deep Search, searching your own name is allowed, and here is what you get:

• A free account shows the matches. Type your full name and press Find matches, adding a company, job title or city if your name is common. You see every possible match, with a role, company and location where public pages give them, how many sources describe each one, and a match word such as Strong match.
• The full report needs a plan. The report on the match you pick can cover work history, education, public profiles and public photos, and every fact links to the page it came from.
• Some details never appear. Email addresses, phone numbers and messaging links are removed from every result before anyone sees it.

Deep Search reads only publicly reachable pages, so this is not a full digital footprint check: it shows what the open web says about you, not what sits behind a login. Look for a namesake's pages mixed in with yours, or an old job shown as current. Those are the pages to update or ask about. See how a Deep Search report is built, or search your own name.

Work from the source outwards. Google's guide to contacting a website owner explains why: even after Google removes a result, the page is still there, and people can reach it by its address, through social media or from other search engines. So fix what you control, ask site owners about the rest, then ask search engines to catch up.

Fix what you control

Edit or delete your own posts, make old albums private, update your bios and close accounts you don't use. Google says content a site has removed eventually drops out of Google Search as part of its regular updates. If a deleted page still shows up, or shows an old description, use Google's Refresh outdated content tool and enter the page's address.

Ask the site owner

For pages you don't control, write to whoever runs the site. Look for a contact page or an email address, usually linked from the home page. Google's guide also suggests searching for whois and the site's address to find the owner, or the company that hosts the site if the owner doesn't answer. Paste the page's address, say what is wrong, and ask for what you want: a correction, an update or removal. Keep a copy of what you send.

Ask Google and Bing to remove results

For results that show your contact details, use Results about you. For the other private information Google's policy covers, such as ID numbers or medical records, use its removal request form.

Bing's content removal tool handles two kinds of outdated results: pages that are now broken links (404 Not Found), and pages whose cached copy in Bing still shows content the site has removed. If you don't own the site, Bing asks you to contact its webmaster first and use the tool once the content is gone. You need to log in to Bing Webmaster Tools to use it.

Opt out of people search sites and data brokers

For our results, ask us to remove your name. It is free, you don't need an account, and we reply by email. It covers Deep Search only: the pages a report links to belong to other sites and stay online.

Other people search sites each have their own opt-out. The FTC's guide to people search sites that sell your information explains the do-it-yourself route: find your listing on each site, follow its opt-out steps, and check back from time to time, because new information can appear. Paid services will do the opt-outs for you; before you pay for one, the FTC suggests asking how many sites they cover and how often they check again. The FTC adds that opting out doesn't remove your information from government public records.

If you live in California, the state's privacy agency runs DROP, a free service that sends one deletion request to over 600 registered data brokers. Since August 1, 2026, data brokers have had to check it at least every 45 days and process the requests, and the agency says your status can take up to 90 days to update.

UK readers: the right to erasure

UK data protection law lets you ask an organisation to delete personal data it holds about you, and in some circumstances it must. The ICO's guide to your right to get your data deleted lists when the right applies, for example when the organisation no longer needs the data or used it unlawfully, and when it can refuse, for example for freedom of expression. You can ask verbally, but the ICO recommends following up in writing. The organisation normally has one calendar month to reply and usually can't charge a fee. If you are unhappy with the answer, complain to the organisation first, then to the ICO. The ICO notes that this guidance is under review after the Data (Use and Access) Act.

Keep checking

New pages appear and old details can come back. Keep the Results about you notifications on, repeat your searches now and then, and look again at any people search site you opted out of, as the FTC suggests.

Related guides

• How to find someone online, the right way: the same search habits, used to look up someone else.
• Is it legal to look someone up? What the law allows, and why a people search is not a background check.
• How to verify someone's identity before you meet: checks to run before a meeting or a new client.