Manage your Facebook search engine display

Posted on May 26, 2009 in Life, Web Dev | 4 comments

Facebook (FB) recently enabled a public version of its users’ profile pages to be indexed by Google and other search engines. While this is a good thing in my opinion (it could provide more detail in a web search for a particular person), it’s worth reviewing what information appears on that public profile page. To my knowledge, FB didn’t publicize this much so I’ve written a short tutorial here as I know most people have a FB account and this may be of use.

1. Log in to your FB account and look for the “Settings” menu near the upper-right corner of the screen. (At least, that’s where it’s at today; FB seems to be on a redesign kick every couple months.) Hover your mouse over it a moment and you’ll get a short menu that will look something like the image at the right. Click “Privacy Settings.”
2. A list of privacy areas appears. It’s a good idea to review them all, but we’re concerned here with “Search.”
3. The search privacy settings appear, which look like this:
   

If you’d like to eliminate any search engine results including a public profile of you, uncheck the “Public Search Listing” box. That’s it; your profile page shouldn’t appear in any search engine.

I’ve opted to keep my profile public, but I’ve reduced what information appears in it. By default, your friends and pages that you’ve become a FB “fan” of are shown. That’s a little too much info to include in an search engine, I feel. I don’t mind if people see that I have a FB account, but who I’ve chosen to friend or become a fan of is too personal to appear there. Allowing people to try and contact me through FB is fine, so I’ve left those options active.

I hope that’s a useful tutorial for you to protect your personal information.

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