Start with a list of URLs, not an email
Search your own name in quotes, then your name with your city, then your name with the word arrest, and copy the exact URL of every page that comes back. Every step below runs per URL, and Google removes only the URLs you hand it, up to 1,000 per submission. A URL you didn't find is a URL that stays up.
On each page, write down two things. The record ID the site prints on your page, because Mugshots.com asks for its own ID number in the request, and whether the site is demanding money to take the page down. Screenshot a payment demand before you contact anyone, because that screenshot is the evidence Google's form asks for and paying the site erases it.
Leave the government pages off your list. Don't file on the sheriff's booking page or the clerk's docket, Google won't remove them and the submission is spent. Work the private copies, which is what every request below is aimed at.
Get the one document every request runs on
Every door below opens with paperwork from the court. The strong version is an order: expungement, sealing, record restriction, or a no-information filing, signed by a judge and sealed by the court. Those are the exact grounds Mugshots.com removes for, and the same document is what a statutory demand and a Google submission get attached to.
If you don't have one yet, call the clerk of courts in the county that handled the case and ask for a certified copy of your disposition. Have your docket number and your arrest date ready before you dial. In Pennsylvania the petitions are forms on the courts' own site, Petition for Expungement Pursuant to Pa.R.Crim.P. 490 for summary offenses and Rule 790 for court cases, filed under 18 Pa.C.S. § 9122. Other states run their own forms and their own waiting periods.
Send the order yourself, one site at a time. Nobody forwards it for you, so plan on a separate email or certified letter for every URL on the list you built in step one, each carrying its own clean copy of the same scan.
Send the Mugshots.com request, and send it right the first time
The request is free and the procedure is published on the site's own record maintenance page: "Mugshots.com does not charge for removing or updating mugshots/arrest records." Email your court documentation to mugshots.com1@gmail.com and put your Mugshots.com record ID in the message. The ID is printed on your own page, so pull it before you start writing.
Send a clean, full-page scan of the whole order, not a photo, and keep the sent mail and the attachment you sent. Illegible documents get discarded silently, so your own copy is the only proof of what went out. The stated window is up to 10 business days, and the site disclaims any guarantee on timing, so don't read silence at day three as a refusal.
If your case ended in acquittal, dismissal, nolle prosequi, exoneration, pardon or adjudication withheld, that goes to a different address, docverify1@gmail.com, and the result is an annotation the site marks as not a removal. Your disposition then shows on every page about the arrest. Do it anyway, because a visible dismissal beats a bare booking photo, and then keep working the court order.
Send the state statute if you're in Georgia, Texas or California
Georgia is the cleanest. Under O.C.G.A. § 10-1-393.5, the operator "shall, without fee or compensation, remove" the booking photograph within 30 days of a written request, on eight triggers including dismissal, acquittal, restricted access and an expired statute of limitations. Send it by certified mail or statutory overnight delivery to the registered agent or principal place of business, carrying your name, date of birth, date of arrest and the arresting agency.
Texas has more teeth, and one threshold decides whether it applies to you at all. For an adult arrest record, Business and Commerce Code Chapter 109 reaches a site that charges $150 or more to remove, or any fee at all to correct. Where it applies, the site has to verify the disputed data with law enforcement free of charge, finish the investigation not later than the 45th business day after your notice, and write to you within five business days of finishing. Publishing after notice of an expunction or nondisclosure order is actionable up to $500 per violation plus $500 for each subsequent day, costs and fees. The duty starts when you give notice, so serve the order yourself and date it.
California is the one to be careful with. Civil Code § 1798.91.1 bans the removal fee and gives you a private action for the greater of $1,000 per violation or actual damages, but it imposes no duty to remove anything. And all three statutes need a defendant you can serve: Mugshots.com's own footer names an operator in Nevis, West Indies.
File with Google on the exploitative-sites form
The policy that fits an arrest page is content on sites with exploitative removal practices, and all three of its conditions have to hold: you're the subject of the content at the URL, the site is not a business review site, and the site requires payment to have the content removed. File it on the content removal form, which takes your URLs, your screenshots and a written explanation of how the site is exploitative.
The third condition is where most arrest removals die, so check it before you spend an hour on the form. Mugshots.com now states in writing that it doesn't charge, which fails the test, so when the site charges you nothing, work the court order and the statute instead.
Don't file at Results about you. It covers phone numbers, addresses, emails, Social Security, passport and driver's license numbers, and it has no category for an arrest record, so an arrest URL produces a denial that reads like Google refusing you when it's really the wrong door. Google publishes no turnaround time for any of these decisions, so anyone quoting you a Google timeline is guessing.
Once a page is down, clear the result it left behind
Run the dead URL through the Refresh Outdated Content tool, which clears the stale result off your name. It needs a Google account, and it only works after the page is gone or materially changed. Google is blunt about the limit: "If the page still exists, and if the information you want removed is still there, this tool is not for you." Submit a live page and you get a denial.
Two limits to plan around. An approved refresh expires after 180 days, and a site owner who has verified that domain in Search Console can cancel your request outright. So confirm the page is actually dead before you submit, and check the status of every request you file rather than assuming it held.
Then run the same three searches again, on a schedule you'll keep: your name in quotes, your name with your city, your name with the word arrest. A new URL is a new request, and it starts at step one with the same order you already have.
Where this stops, and what doing it yourself costs
None of these requests costs money. Mugshots.com says so on its policy page, Georgia's statute says "without fee or compensation," and Google's form is free. What it costs is repetition: every copy is a separate request in that site's format to that site's address, most of them never reply, and one of them throws away a bad scan without telling you.
It stops working on a conviction that stands. Every removal trigger in every layer keys on a favorable outcome, so if you were convicted and the conviction hasn't been expunged, sealed, pardoned or granted limited access, you meet none of them, and 15 U.S.C. § 1681c(a)(5) carves convictions out of the seven-year limit entirely. The work there is suppression, which means building pages that outrank the record.
It also stops at the newsroom, and at the courthouse. A paper that reported your arrest accurately can decline forever, and there's no request that changes that. And the honest limit on everything above: taking a copy down does not seal or expunge the court's own record. The clerk's file and the sheriff's roster stay exactly where they are.