Search giant Google has recently announced that it plans to hide all content that has been removed using the “right to be forgotten” ruling.
The announcement means that flagged content will be wiped in a larger number of EU countries as the ruling comes in to effect across more versions of the iconic search engine.
Previously, EU citizens were able to submit a request to the search company to remove certain information from appearing in search results and Google would decide whether to remove it from all versions of the search engine within the European Union. However, this meant that the content could still be seen if an international version of the search engine was used, for example Google.com.
Following a long legal battle, Google has confirmed that it will remove all successful content challenges from every version of its search engine on which they are being displayed, provided they are being viewed in the country where the removal request was approved.
The American corporation has long been involved in a face-off with French data protection authorities, which had threatened legal action if the search company did not comply with the French request to remove data from all versions of the site worldwide.
Although the changes have been approved by Google, the company has yet to reveal an official date for these changes other than “the near future”. It is believed that the new approach to the “right to be forgotten” will be applied when European IP addresses are detected, no matter the version of Google being used for the search.
The original “right to be forgotten” rulings were created back in 2014, and since its inception, Google has revealed that it has had nearly 400,000 requests for content to be removed. Of these requests, approximately 42% of them were accepted by the search company and were appropriately dealt with from there.
These changes have been largely welcomed by a number of online security campaigners who state that the public can now be reassured that out-of-date, inaccurate or inappropriate data will be blocked from Google searches.
Having searchable content has long been a focus point for many companies wishing to appear at the top of Google’s rankings. To help them achieve higher rankings, many businesses call upon digital marketing agencies such as Engage Web to help them devise and implement SEO strategies, which often involve creating fresh and accurate content to appease Google’s ever-changing algorithms to decide who appears at the top of the rankings.
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