Google published the latest Forget Me figures in which it has evaluated 1,234,092 URLs from 348,085 requests and removed 42% of all requested URLs.
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Google Inc. disclosed Wednesday that it has taken down almost half of the 1.2 million links that European users have flagged for removal from search results since the European Court of Justice’s controversial “right to be forgotten” ruling, with links to content posted on Facebook being the most frequently deleted.
In both countries, about 48 percent of the unwanted links were eliminated from Google search results, according to the report.
Overall, the most popular targets for removal requests are a mix of “people search” websites, including 192.com, Profile Engine, YouTube and Google+.
But only a small number of such requests came from south-eastern Europe.
Though Google has been working on the right to be forgotten requests for a year, it can be successful only if it is not based on public interest or record.
Yelp, a provider of reviews and locations for restaurants on the Internet, heavily relies on Google’s search engine when people need its information, thus it makes sense that it is suspicious of Google’s activities.
A Google spokeswoman told Re/code that far from being a nefarious plan to silence rivals, the whole debacle was down to a hiccup. Nine percent of the total requests are accounted by the top 10 domains.
Since previous year, Europeans have been able to petition search engines like Google or Yahoo to remove links about them when the page contains inaccurate, irrelevant or excessive information about people.
Italy: A woman requested that Google remove a decades-old article about her husband’s murder, which included her name.
“Determining whether content is in the public interest is complex and may mean considering many diverse factors”.
Several examples of requests accepted by Google were of victims of crime requesting that reports of the crime not show up when someone searched for their name.
The U.K.’s Information Commissioner’s Office ordered Google in August to remove links to articles that described URLs it had removed. However, the search giant did not explain why it removed some links, and retained others.
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You can see Google’s information on these “right to be forgotten” takedowns here.
