Photothermal therapy represents a non-invasive therapeutic tool to eradicate cancer tumor with minimum toxic effects. In this ablative therapy, accurate delivery of efficient photothermal conversion agents followed by laser irradiation results in tumor ablation with lower toxicity compared to other cancer therapies. Gold nanomaterials are efficient to passively target and deliver photothermal agents to the cancer tumor. Through surface plasma resonance, gold nanomaterials including nanorods, nanostars, nanoflowers, nanocages and nanoshells exhibited strong NIR absorption and are widely utilized during photothermal ablative therapy of cancer. Currently, researchers have devoted their attention to minimize toxicity of photothermal agents using modified probe design. By developing this noninvasive cancer therapy, expectations to minimize toxicity of cancer treatment may become reality sooner.