Washington, March 5

Google said on Friday it would implement changes in how it applies the so-called right to be forgotten for online searches made in Europe.

Changes, to be implemented next week, would close a loophole that allowed Europeans to find deleted entries by using Google.com instead of search page for their local country.

“Starting next week, in addition to our existing practice, we will also use geo-location signals (like IP addresses) to restrict access to the de-listed URL on all Google Search domains, including google.com, when accessed from the country of the person requesting the removal,” said a blog post from Peter Fleischer, Google’s global privacy counsel. “We’ll apply the change retrospectively, to all de-listings that we have already done under the European Court ruling.”

A European Court of Justice ruling in May 2014 recognising the ‘right to be forgotten’ opened the door for Google users to ask the search engine to remove results about them that are inaccurate or no longer relevant.

Google set up an online form that people in Europe can fill out to ask for information to be excluded from search results.

Now a part of the holding company Alphabet under a reorganisation, Google’s moves failed to satisfy some regulators, notably in France, because the users could get around the restriction.

Google has not changed search results in other areas such as the US.

Up to now, Google had been deleting certain results from searches made on google.de, google.fr, google.co.uk and other domains within Europe.

“We’re changing our approach as a result of specific discussions that we’ve had with EU data protection regulators in recent months,” Fleischer said.

“We believe that this additional layer of de-listing enables us to provide the enhanced protections that European regulators ask us for, while also upholding the rights of people in other countries to access lawfully published information.”