Get the certified order first
Nearly every route below opens with the same document, so get the order before you send a single request. You want a certified court order of expungement, sealing, or record restriction, signed by a judge and sealed by the court, and you get certified copies from the clerk of courts in the county where the case was filed. While you're there, write down the full docket number, the county, and the court, since every form asks for all three.
In Pennsylvania, if your case ended in ARD, you don't petition for anything. Pa.R.Crim.P. 320 says the judge who dismisses the charges also shall order the expungement of the arrest record, and the Commonwealth gets 30 days after service of the dismissal motion to object. If you never saw an order, call the clerk and ask where it is. If your case is a conviction, the route is the official Rule 790 petition, filed with the Clerk of Courts in the county of the case, and a petition is a filing, not an outcome. Ask a Pennsylvania defense attorney what your disposition qualifies for before you pay a filing fee.
The other door is Clean Slate limited access, and it seals rather than erases. Whether a DUI qualifies is an open question, so put that to the same attorney rather than assuming yours does. Once any order lands, the state portal drops the docket without being asked: the AOPC's own help document lists expunged, pending-expungement, sealed and limited-access cases among the docket sheets it won't return. That's one page you never have to chase.
Build the URL list while you wait
The list is the part you can do today, while the order is pending. Search your name, then your name with the county, then the docket number, and save the exact URL of every page carrying the case. Screenshot each one before you file anything. Google acts only on the URLs you submit, so a partial list produces a partial removal, and most sites want their own record ID attached to the request that names them.
Sort the list into four piles as you build it, because each pile gets a different request: mugshot and arrest sites, background screening companies, news stories, and everything else. Check the second and third pages of results, and search in a private window. This list is the whole job. Everything after it is sending the same order to the addresses on it.
Send the order to Mugshots.com
Read Mugshots.com's record maintenance page before you write to anyone there, because the site states plainly that it doesn't charge for removing or updating arrest records. Send your request to the removal address published on that page, attach the court order, and include your Mugshots.com ID, which sits on the page carrying your arrest. Disposition updates go to a different address on the same page, so pick the right one before you hit send.
The documentation has to be signed by a judge, sealed by the court, and legible. The site's policy says non-legible documents are discarded with no notification at all, so a scan a shade too dark disappears and you wait on a queue you never entered. Scan it flat, full size, and in good light.
Then wait the window out before you chase anything. Requests are handled first come, first serve, the site allows up to 10 business days, and it guarantees no timeline. If the page is still up after that, resend the identical package with a cleaner scan instead of escalating, because a demand letter buys you nothing here.
Dispute the background check copies
A background screening company is a consumer reporting agency, and 15 U.S.C. § 1681i turns a written dispute into a free reinvestigation inside the 30-day period beginning on the date the agency receives your notice, after which it has to promptly delete or modify anything that can't stand. Section 1681e(b) already requires that company to follow reasonable procedures to assure maximum possible accuracy, so quote it and make them do it.
Write each screening company its own letter with the court order, a copy of the report showing the item, and the exact line you're disputing, and send it so receipt is provable, because the clock runs from receipt and not from the date you typed at the top. Put the expiry date in your calendar the day you mail it, and follow up the day after it passes.
Two limits, up front. Section 1681c caps records of arrest at seven years but carves out records of convictions of crimes, so a DUI conviction is reportable forever, and § 1681c(b) lifts the arrest cap entirely for jobs paying $75,000 or more. The CFPB advisory opinion behind this route was withdrawn effective May 12, 2025, so don't build your letter on it. Cite the statute sections instead, which are untouched and still carry the deadline.
File with Google only where its policy reaches
Google runs one policy that can touch a mugshot page and one that can't, and filing under the wrong one costs you weeks. The exploitative removals policy states three criteria: you're the subject of the content, the site isn't a business review site, and the website requires payment to have the content removed. File the removal form against any site still charging a fee and attach screenshots of the fee demand itself. A site that has stopped charging doesn't meet that third criterion as Google writes it, so don't count on this form there.
Don't file under the personal information removal policy. It covers addresses, phone numbers, government ID numbers, bank and card numbers, signatures, medical records, login credentials and doxxing content, and arrest records, mugshots and court records appear nowhere in it.
Whatever Google grants, be clear on what you got. It removes the reported URL from its results and says the content may still exist on the web. That's a de-index, not a deletion, and it works one URL at a time, which is exactly why the list matters. Save Google's Refresh Outdated Content instructions for last, after a page has actually changed or come down, because that tool only reconciles the index with a page that already moved.
When a page doesn't come down
Resend once: same address, same order, cleaner scan. Wait out the published window before you do it: 10 business days at Mugshots.com, 30 days at a screening company, and no published turnaround at all from Google or from a Pennsylvania court on an expungement filing, so don't count days you were never promised.
For a news story, ask, and expect a no. The documented programs are voluntary and out of state: the Boston Globe's Fresh Start sends requests to a newsroom committee that meets monthly and can update the story or de-index it, and cleveland.com runs an equivalent. Ask your own paper what its policy is instead of assuming it has one, keep the note short and factual, and attach the order.
Judyrecords publishes no opt-out page, no privacy page and no removal policy anywhere in its terms. When a site publishes no route, stop writing to it and put the hours into the copies that answer.
What this doesn't fix, and what it costs you alone
Removing an aggregator copy doesn't seal, expunge or alter the court's own record. In Pennsylvania it doesn't clean your driving record either: the state supreme court upheld a license suspension in July 2025 that counted an expunged ARD as the prior offense, and that opinion says PennDOT has to keep an ARD acceptance for ten years.
Copies already taken stay taken, so the URL list, not the court order, is the part of this that never finishes. Re-run your searches after every removal lands, and add anything new to the list.
Every request in this guide is free to send. What you actually pay is the county's filing fee on a petition, whatever processing fees that county adds, and certified copies of the order. The rest of the price is your time: you inventory every URL one at a time, write each request to that site's published policy, wait out each site's window, then go back and check, because the same case can come back under a new URL. One round of filing was never the job.