PDF that I uploaded many years ago containing sensitive information showing up in google searches

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  nopeeeeeeeeee · Member · Sep 9, 2015 at 5:12 am

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  I uploaded (I believe, I may have done something else to put it to my name) a pdf to my blog melanieoregon.wordpress.com many years ago, containing my full name in it. When my name is googled, the file shows up for anyone to access. I accessed my blog, and deleted the entire blog, hoping that would rid it from Google’s results, but no luck so far. What can I do to ensure that it won’t show up in Google’s results? Either by making it private, deleting my account, etc. I’m not very familiar with the site, I haven’t used it in years.

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  kokkieh · Staff · Sep 9, 2015 at 5:27 am

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  Hi there. What you’re seeing is most likely a cached page. Search engines make copies of websites and keep it on their servers to make searching faster. Even if you delete a page from your site, the cached copy can still exist for months, even years afterwards.

  Unfortunately WordPress.com can’t do anything about that, as it can’t control what search engines, which are entirely different companies, do. You’ll need to contact each search engine directly to request they remove it. Here are instructions for Google specifically: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1663419?hl=en