Now that you have set your privacy settings for your profile, let’s have a look at the “Search” privacy settings.
Firstly, what is a public search listing?
Quoting directly from Facebook help section,”When someone who is not a Facebook user searches for your profile outside of Facebook, they will see your public search listing. Your public search listing contains the same information as your regular search listing within the site – your name and profile picture thumbnail. The listing will also contain your friends’ thumbnails if available, as well as your username URL if you have created a username. Your public search listing will only be available if you allow “Everyone” to search for you and have the “Create a public search listing for me and submit it for search engine indexing” box checked. You can adjust these settings from the Search section of the Privacy page.
Also note that people who do not yet use Facebook will not be able to interact with you or view your full information without registering for the site. Your public search listing will not affect any of your normal Search privacy settings. A non-Facebook user viewing your result would see the same search result if they registered with the site.
Your public search listing will also appear in search engine indexes if this box is checked, making it even easier for your friends to connect with you. By more efficiently connecting people, we hope that we can make your experience more meaningful on the site.”
By default, your profile can be searched by everyone on Facebook and also appear in public searches like Google. Though people will find you, only a limited amount of information about you will be available to view. However, it’s up to you to determine what people can see and what people cannot.
Go to your Search settings as follows. Select “Settings” then select “Privacy Settings” and then the “Search” option. Once you are in your Search privacy settings page, you will have a settings dialog box as the image below.
Now, for the first field “Search Visibility”, If you select “Everyone”, then anyone whose searching keyword matches your profile information like name or email address will be able to see you in their results. You can select your desired settings from the drop-down menu.
Sometimes it is a good thing to limit this search to only our friends or to those who are in your network. Sometimes, it may not be a very good idea to hide ourselves from searches, because lots of people who knows you but is not connected to you will try to search and connect to you through the search listings. So the choice is up to you, but there is something that we can still do and that is even if you are listed or displayed in search, you can limit the information that appears on the search result apart from the limited profile information that is being displayed.
Five options with check box will be listed there under the Search Result Content section.
1. My profile picture
2. My friend list
3. A link to add me as a friend
4. A link to send me a message
5. Pages I am a fan of
By default, all the options will be checked, so you remove or include those extra information.
After the Search Result content section you will find the Public Search Listing section. In that section you will see an option like the one given below, and by default it will be checked.
As the descriptions suggests, your profile will appear to others in public searches whenever you match their search criteria. To remove yourself from being listed in results of public searches, uncheck the option. Whenever you make this change the effect will not be immediate. It may take some hours until the external search directory updates.
If you are not really sure what is being displayed in the search results, you can see a preview of it by going through the “(see preview)” link underlined in the image given above. You can also use it to check after you make any changes to the other options available in the Search privacy settings. Do not forget to save the changes first before you check out the preview.
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