Why one case ends up on a dozen sites
Federal filings go out through PACER and state filings go out through county clerk portals, but neither ranks on your name, because a clerk's portal hides its records behind a search form and Google can't crawl a search form. What ranks is the copy a private company made.
Those companies read the same feeds in bulk, the day a case is docketed. A federal matter lands on CourtListener, PacerMonitor and often CaseMine, a state case lands on Trellis, UniCourt and sometimes Justia, and DocketBird and vLex take their own cut. Nobody coordinates, so nobody knows what the others published. The page each one builds is a plain URL with your name and the case caption in the title, in the exact order a search engine likes.
People get this part wrong, and it's expensive. You cleared the site you found, and the other seven never heard about it. A removal at DocketBird changes what your name returns only if DocketBird was the only site that had it. It almost never is.
The court's record, the copies, and Google's index
Three different things sit behind one search result. People constantly spend money on the wrong one. The court's record is the clerk's file, and only a judge moves it. The aggregator's copy is a page on a private company's website, and only that company moves it. Google's index is a listing that points at the copy, and it updates on Google's schedule, not yours.
Only the middle one is ours. We send requests to private companies that publish their own policies and decide their own outcomes, and nothing we file reaches the clerk's file or PACER, and no fee anybody charges you changes that.
The index matters more than it sounds. A page that's already gone can hold its ranking for weeks while Google gets around to re-crawling it. That's why the last step of every removal is telling Google the page changed, and if you skip it you'll swear the removal didn't work.
What an expungement reaches and what it misses
An expungement or a sealing order binds the court and the agencies holding the official record, but it doesn't order a private website to delete anything, and no clerk sends a notice down the chain to Justia. The order was directed at a court, so the websites holding a copy were never told, and most people find that out months after paying to close the case.
So the sequence runs the opposite way from how it feels. The expungement is what makes the removal requests work, not what makes them unnecessary. CourtListener's policy says deletion requires a sealing or expungement order from the court that issued the filing. DocketBird's free removal request is free precisely because the case was sealed or expunged, and your order is the document that opens doors that stay shut without it.
If your case can be sealed, finish that with a lawyer before you spend a dollar on removals. We aren't a law firm and we don't file petitions. Still open? Wait. Nothing here is removable while the case is live.
Build the inventory before you send anything
Search your full name in quotes, then your name with the case number, then the case number on its own, and go to page two, because that's where the sites you've never heard of live. Save every URL in one list.
While you're in there, sort the list into three buckets, because government sources move for a court order and nothing else. Private aggregators are the bucket that has a form, and it's the only bucket worth your time this week. Everything else, news stories and the mugshot sites that scrape booking logs, is a different job with different rules.
Then go get the paper. Every request in the middle bucket wants the same package: the certified disposition or dismissal order, the case number, the court and county, the exact URL, and one line saying who you are in the case.
One request per site, written to that site's policy
There's no single form and no master switch. Each site publishes its own route and honors only that one. CourtListener takes a contact form and grants a search-engine block, and UniCourt takes requests only from a party, a guardian, or an attorney of record. Trellis wants a named legal ground and redacts for free, PacerMonitor has no form and three grounds, and CaseMine wants Removal Request in the subject line.
Send them in parallel, not one at a time. One to four weeks per site is normal, and a site that never answers is a no. Write it down as a no instead of leaving it open, because an open item you re-check every Tuesday for six months is the real cost of doing this alone.
Doing it yourself is completely possible, and every guide under this page is written so you can. What it costs you is the searching, the trip to the clerk's counter, eight separate requests written eight different ways, and the follow-up when half of them go quiet. Budget several evenings, not one.
De-index at Google after the page changes
The removal isn't finished until the search result is. Once a page is gone or your name is off it, submit the URL to Google's Refresh Outdated Content tool. It's the form built for a page that has already changed.
The other two Google tools do different jobs, and neither removes a court record. The URL removal tool hides a live result temporarily while the page stays up the whole time, and Results about you is built for contact details and doxxing, not dockets.
Then watch it. For 30 to 60 days. These sites re-scrape the courts, so a record that came down in March comes back in September under a different URL. A page that reappears has to be re-submitted, and that follow-up is the part almost nobody doing this alone keeps up with.
What none of this moves
A court file is public and stays public. The clerk's docket, PACER, the state judiciary site: those are permanent unless a judge says otherwise, and an active conviction, a civil judgment and a federal bankruptcy filing are accurate, current and public. No form reaches any of them.
On CourtListener the ceiling is de-indexing, not deletion, and the page keeps its URL for anyone holding the link. Bulk data files and public APIs handed your docket to whoever downloaded them, and those copies carry no address to write to, so when a record isn't coming down, the work stops being removal and becomes building accurate material that outranks it.
We'll tell you which of those two situations you're in before you pay, because it changes what you should buy.