When your copyrighted work is reposted somewhere you do not control, getting it out of Google Search is often the fastest relief you can get. Most people only ever reach a page because it shows up in search, so removing it from Google’s results cuts off the way strangers find it, even while you work on the slower job of getting the page itself taken down.
What deindexing does, and what it does not
A Google copyright removal does one specific thing: it takes the infringing URL out of Google’s search results. The page stays online, hosted wherever it was. Nobody finds it through Google, but the file is still on the server.
That is why deindexing is a companion to a host takedown, not a replacement for it. Send the Google request to stop people finding the content, and in parallel send a DMCA notice to the host to get the page actually removed. Run both at once rather than waiting for one to finish.
Use Google’s copyright removal form
Everything goes through Google’s DMCA report form for Search.
Open it and follow the prompts. You will identify yourself as the copyright owner or an authorized agent, list the infringing URLs (the exact pages appearing in Google’s results), point to where your original work can be found, and sign the standard good-faith and accuracy statements. If you want help with the wording of the work description and the ownership statement, our DMCA notice generator produces that language for you to adapt into the form.
Be precise with the URLs. Each one should point to a specific page that appears in search, not a homepage or a general domain.
After you submit
Google reviews the request and, for a valid notice, removes the URLs from search, usually within a few weeks and often sooner. Once it is done, the pages stop surfacing when someone searches your name or the title of the work.
Keep a record of the URLs you submitted, because content like this tends to reappear at new addresses, and you will want to file again quickly when it does.
Deindexing is one engine at a time, so if your content also shows up on Bing or Yandex, you file the equivalent request with each. And remember that search removal works best alongside a host takedown: our guide to sending a DMCA notice covers that side, and the explainer on what the DMCA is covers why these requests work.