Facebook has gone forward with an initiative to have member profiles appear in search engine results pages. When Internet users search for your name on Google, Yahoo!, MSN, and other search engines, Facebook wants your profile to show up in those query results.
How to Show Your Facebook Profile to Google et al
This is good news if you maintain a professional quality Facebook profile. Having it appear in organic searches for your name is one more element of control over your online reputation. If this is the case then just sit back and relax, because Facebook’s default behavior is include your public profile in search engine results.
Hide Your Facebook Profile From the Search Engines
Conversely if your Facebook profile is evidence of debauchery or open to misinterpretation, you might want to exclude yourself from those search engine results pages. In order to do so you need to visit Facebook’s Privacy Settings for Search and make some changes. You will find a number of checkboxes on the Privacy Settings for Search page. Unchecking these boxes will hide your profile from search results, as well as restrict what people can do with those search results. For example, you can prevent people from poking you, seeing your photo, adding you as a friend, etc…
The public version of your profile that will appear in searche results includes your name and photo by default. If the visitor is not logged into Facebook and listed among your friends, they will need to become one before they can see the rest of your profile’s contents.
Hat tip: “Facebook People Search Engine is Live“, Digital Inspiration.
6 responses
September 5th, 2007
Your Facebook Profile in Search Results « Insomnic Dreams says:
[...] This may not be something you want though. To turn it off, go to the Privacy settings (upper right when signed in) of your account and change the rules for “Search”. You’ll then want to uncheck the option “Allow my public search listing to be indexed by external search engines”. Check this article on Of Zen and Computing for more detailed information. [...]
September 5th, 2007
datazealot | Facebook profiles soon available to search engines says:
[...] Your Facebook profile will soon be available to search engines unless you disable search engine indexing in Facebook’s Privacy Settings for Search. [...]
September 5th, 2007
Your Facebook profile will soon be available to search engines unless… « Dromedia’s Weblog says:
[...] Your Facebook profile will soon be available to search engines unless you disable search engine indexing in Facebook’s Privacy Settings for Search. [...]
September 5th, 2007
bloggy blog says:
[...] Facebook Profiles to Appear in Search Engine Results (tags: socialnetworking privacy) [...]
September 5th, 2007
Privacy: Your Facebook profile will soon be available … at SoftSaurus says:
[...] Your Facebook profile will soon be available to search engines unless you disable search engine indexing in Facebook’s Privacy Settings for Search. [...]
September 5th, 2007
Facebook Profiles Now Public | The Privacy Guy says:
[...] For more detailed instructions check out this blog posting from Of Zen and Computing. [...]
Leave a Comment