Help with Google search visibility
Keep in mind that the words you write in your X profile or public posts may be indexed by Google and other search engines, and cause your profile or posts to come up in a search for those terms.
Depending on the degree to which this concerns you, you can try one or more of the steps below to prevent certain information from displaying in third party search results:
- Change your name as it appears in your profile
- Change your username
- Protect your posts
Note: Third-party search engines like Google use many factors to generate search results, like the content of public posts and X profiles, or blogs and other websites that link to posts or X profiles. X does not control search results on third party search engines.
Why are my posts appearing on Google after deleting or protecting them?
Protected posts:
- Public posts posted before you enable the setting to protect your posts may still be indexed in a third-party search engine. Once you have saved your account settings to protect your posts, the posts you post thereafter will be protected. If you later change your account settings to no longer protect your posts, posts that were previously protected will become public and may be indexed by third-party search engines.
Deleted posts:
- Even if you delete posts, Google and other search engines cache search results, which means that occasionally old information is still searchable until Google and other search engines update their systems to reflect more recent information.
- Any old links appearing in a Google search will lead to X's error page: "That page doesn't exist!" The old links still appear because Google and other search engines may not have the current information updated in their search index.
Google will eventually index updated X information, but if you'd like to request Google to do it sooner, follow these steps:
- Copy the X URL you'd like removed from Google's index (for example: X.com/#!/[username here]/status/12345678)
- Visit Google's page to remove outdated content.
- Paste in the X URL that you'd like removed.
- Submit your request.
Note: You may be required to log in to your Google account to complete the steps above. If you don't have one, you may need to create one. Read more about removing your content from Google's search index.