Stop Google from indexing your Facebook account.
New Way:
Facebook is constantly changing its layout. The new way to disable public search is to go to
- Account – > Privacy Settings
- In the lower left hand corner look for Apps and Websites
- Edit your settings
- Edit settings for the public search
- Uncheck enable public search.
Old Way:
Login to Facebook and go to your privacy settings.
Select the Search Settings
Uncheck: “Create a public search listing for me and submit it for search engine indexing”
Edit: As Dan pointed out in the comments. Make sure your Search Visibility is set to everyone for the “Create a public search listing” option to show up.
It may take a week or more for search engines to completely remove your listing from their indexes. However Facebook is a popular site so I am sure it gets index quite frequently.
9 Comments to Stop Google from indexing your Facebook account.
It’s worth saying that for the checkbox to turn up your inter-facebook search setting must be set to “Everyone”. I had it set to “Friends of friends” and I was turning up in google search results, with no option to turn it off.
Samuel HaddadApril 12, 2009
Dan,
Thanks for the tip, that is a very interesting note. I am going to modify my post to accommodate that, not sure how many people read all the comments.
ivanAugust 25, 2009
is it still possible to do this?
and is the trade off that you have to make your profile viewable to ‘everyone’ on facebook in order to get removed rom google search?
interesting. i’d like to be unsearchable (well, friends of friends is fine on fb) in both locations.
Samuel HaddadAugust 25, 2009
It is still possible to do this.
My guess is that if you have your settings to friends of friends, then Facebook does not create a public entry on search engines, but I have not confirmed this.
saraNovember 30, 2009
I tried, but my inofmatiom still comes up on google, as part of what group i m in. What should i do?
I am in google search i want to remove myself i followed how to turn off but i still come up in google search.
what should i do??????
Samuel HaddadSeptember 29, 2010
You did the right thing by hiding yourself, but it is not instant. You must wait until Google re-crawls the web. I would give it a few days and check again. Let me know if it works.
roseJanuary 9, 2011
the facebook blue bar has changed and i cannot find that particular setting anymore…is it still possible to stop me from coming up on facebook?? 
Mr Adam SmolkowiczApril 11, 2011
Smolkowicz Hey thanks for the info
April 12, 2009