Court records leave Google one URL at a time. Each site that republishes your docket sets its own rule, and most will not delete anything without a sealing order from the court that issued the record.
That is the part people learn late. One case can produce six or more indexed pages, because the same docket is copied by several commercial and nonprofit publishers. Each has its own form, its own idea of what counts as proof, and its own answer when you ask. What follows is what each of the six major republishers says, taken from its own policy page rather than from someone else’s summary of it.
Why does one lawsuit put six results on page one?
Because the court publishes the docket once and the internet copies it many times. Federal dockets flow out of PACER. State dockets flow out of county and state case portals. Both are then republished by services that build their own pages around the same case, and every one of those pages is a separate URL owned by a separate company.
A federal case is commonly carried by PacerMonitor, CourtListener, Justia Dockets, DocketBird and UniCourt at the same time. A state case is more often carried by Trellis and UniCourt. If the case produced a written opinion, that opinion gets its own life on opinion databases. If a reporter covered it, the news article is a seventh problem with a seventh owner.
Getting the UniCourt page removed does nothing to the Justia page. This is why we price link removal per URL, at $1,000 to $2,000 per link after an eligibility check, rather than as a monthly retainer. If your case sits on five republishers, that is five removals, and the honest count is the first thing worth knowing before you spend anything.
What does each court record site require to remove a page?
Three of the six require a court order sealing the record before they will delete anything. Two of those three will still block search engines without one, which is often the outcome that matters. One publishes no removal policy at all. Here is the current position of each operator, quoted from its own published page.
| Operator | What its policy says | Documentation it requires | Weaker option offered |
|---|---|---|---|
| UniCourt | Accepts a Public Records Redaction Request to redact or seal a record that may appear in search engines. Aims to decide within 30 days and to answer in writing. Reserves the right to deny, to make no decision, or to republish a redacted record. | Requester must be a party, a legal guardian or fiduciary of a party, or an attorney for a party. Supporting documentation such as court orders and police reports. If a request is denied, it asks for a sealing order from the court. | Redaction rather than deletion, at its discretion |
| Trellis | A Request Redaction button appears on the case page. Requests are processed in the order received, with no published timeline. Trellis states it controls only URLs ending in trellis.law and cannot control search engines. | Uploading a court order is optional for redaction. An Order to Seal from the applicable court is required for permanent deletion. | Redaction without a court order |
| PacerMonitor | No published removal, redaction or opt-out policy. Its privacy policy addresses marketing email preferences only and says nothing about case records. | Not stated anywhere public. Requests go to support@pacermonitor.com with no published standard. | None published |
| CourtListener (Free Law Project) | Will not remove any public document without a court order. For sealed or expunged cases it generally anonymizes or redacts by replacing names with initials or black boxes and adding an explanatory note. States that all removals not pursuant to a court order are at its sole discretion. | A court order for deletion. For blocking, the request must include links to the specific pages. | Blocks search engines using the robots meta tag or the X-Robots-Tag header, with no promise the block stays in place |
| Justia Dockets | Will not fully remove items from its database without an applicable court order sealing the record or designating it for removal from the public record. | A sealing or removal order for deletion. A written request for search engine blocking. | Reasonable accommodation on written request to block filings and opinions from search results using robots.txt |
| DocketBird | Provides individuals a means to request removal of court materials at no charge, but is under no obligation to grant a request. When it does, it returns an HTTP 404 to Google on re-crawl. Materials stay accessible to account holders. | No documentation standard published. Requests go to its stated contact addresses. | Hidden from public view while remaining available to subscribers |
Sources for the table, in order: UniCourt Public Records Policy, Trellis redaction guidance and its removal request page, the PacerMonitor privacy policy, the CourtListener content removal policy, Justia’s Why Is My Information Online, and the DocketBird terms of use.
Which court document actually persuades an operator?
A sealing order from the court that issued the record is the strongest document there is, because it changes the status of the record itself rather than describing what happened in the case. Every operator above that will delete anything names a sealing order as the trigger.
An expungement order comes next, and it is where most people get surprised. An expungement binds the court and the agencies holding the record. It does not automatically bind a private company that copied the docket two years earlier. That gap is why an expunged case still shows on Google, and closing it means going to each republisher separately with the order in hand. A dismissal is weakest. It proves the outcome, but the filing itself stays a public document, and several operators will decline on exactly that ground.
There is one narrower route worth knowing. Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 5.2 limits what personal identifiers may appear in a federal filing: social security and taxpayer numbers to the last four digits, dates of birth to the year, minors to initials, and financial account numbers to the last four digits. The rule puts the duty to redact on the filer, not the clerk. When an unredacted identifier made it into a public filing, that is a motion to the court, and it is also the fact pattern where Google’s own removal policy is most likely to apply.
Can Google remove a court record on its own?
Rarely, and only when the page exposes something on a short list. Google’s personal information removal policy covers your address, phone number or email, confidential government IDs, bank or credit card numbers, images of a signature or ID, private records such as medical records, and confidential credentials. A standard docket page listing a case caption, a filing date and a list of documents fits none of those categories.
The Results about you tool has the same limit and one more: Google says it declines results from government and educational institutions and from newspapers, which describes most of what carries a court record. The Refresh Outdated Content tool only works once a page is already gone or materially changed, so it is the last step in the sequence, never the first.
The working order is therefore: count every URL first, obtain the strongest court document available, file with each operator on its own route, then use Google’s outdated content tool on each page that has actually gone to a 404, and monitor for the copies that come back.
What does this cost?
Removal is quoted per link, typically $1,000 to $2,000 per URL, after an eligibility check tells us whether the link is realistically removable. Almost nobody in this category publishes a number, which is exactly why we do. One case commonly means three to six links, so the useful question is not the price of a removal but how many links your case actually generated.
Where removal is genuinely unavailable, suppression is the fallback. It is quoted per engagement rather than per link and costs more than a removal, which is the main reason to exhaust the removal routes first. The difference between the two is covered in more depth in removal vs suppression.
What this does not do
- Removing a link from Google does not delete the source page, and it does not touch the court record. The case still exists at the courthouse and in the court’s own system.
- It does not defeat a background check that pulls from courts or state repositories rather than from Google. If a report is inaccurate, the Fair Credit Reporting Act dispute process is a separate route with its own rights and deadlines, and it is the correct one.
- Any disclosure obligation you have still applies. Nothing here is a way to keep a record from an employer, licensing board, regulator or court entitled to ask for it, and we will not work on that basis.
- Removed pages can reappear. Scrapers and mirrors keep copies, and several operators state plainly that a block is discretionary and may not stay in place. That is what monitoring is for.
- Accurate news reporting, valid unexpunged convictions and sex offender registry listings cannot be removed. Anyone telling you otherwise is selling something that does not exist.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need a lawyer to get a court record removed from Google?
Not for the removal requests themselves. UniCourt is the only one of the six that restricts who may file, and it accepts a party as well as an attorney. You will need counsel if the goal is a sealing or expungement order, because that is a court proceeding and we do not give legal advice.
My case was expunged. Why is it still on Google?
Because the order reached the court and the agencies, not the private companies that had already copied the docket. Each republisher has to be approached separately with the order. See court record removal for how that sequence runs.
How long does it take?
UniCourt is the only operator here that publishes a target, roughly 30 days to a written decision. Trellis says requests are handled in the order received. The others publish nothing. After a page comes down, Google still needs to re-crawl it, which typically adds days rather than hours.
Should I pay a site to take the record down?
No. None of the six operators above charges for a removal request, and DocketBird says so explicitly. Paying a publisher to remove content it posted for free is a model we are against, and on mugshot sites in particular it tends to produce more copies rather than fewer.
Is a de-indexing block as good as deletion?
For the practical problem, usually yes, since almost nobody finds a docket page except through search. It is weaker in one respect: CourtListener states that it makes no guarantees that blocked records stay blocked, so a block is worth monitoring in a way a deletion is not.
Where to start
The first step is counting. Until you know how many URLs your case actually produced and which of them sit with operators that will act without a court order, any quote is guesswork. A Search Risk Audit maps every indexed link tied to your name or your case, marks which are realistically removable and by what route, and gives you a per-link price before you commit to anything. If your matter involves an arrest or a criminal record rather than a civil filing, criminal record removal covers the differences.
Researched and reviewed by the Search Zapper editorial team. Published September 8, 2026. We describe mechanics, not legal advice.