Removing Court Records from Google Search Results: A Guide

Having a dismissed lawsuit or an old criminal case on your record can be a persistent problem. Even if the court document itself is stored in a county database, copies of it on various websites can continue to show up in Google search results for years.

The good news is that these copied records are often relatively easy to remove, according to data from Erase.com. The company found that government pages and press releases are harder to deal with, but even then, removal or de-indexing is possible.

There are four main places where court records can show up online: official court portals, record aggregator sites like CourtListener and Justia, government press releases, and news coverage. Each of these requires a different approach for removal.

Sealing and expungement orders are often confused with one another, but they have distinct meanings. Sealing prevents access to the record, while expungement removes it entirely. However, even an expungement order does not automatically require private entities like newspapers to remove copies of the document from their websites.

Still, clearing your record is worth doing. Many states now have 'Clean Slate' laws that seal some records automatically. Additionally, a sealing or expungement order is the strongest document you can send to a record site, and it can be effective in removing negative search results.