Keeping my Twitter off Google

September 28, 2010 8:59 PM

How do I keep my Twitter from showing up on a Google name search?

I changed my name on Twitter (where you input your real name) months ago, but my Twitter STILL shows up in Google when I search my full name. As my name is fairly unique, I would like for this to stop, as I do not want to appear unprofessional if I am googled by potential employers.

posted by anonymous to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

Once it's out there in search engine land, it can be very hard to get rid of it. My unscientific suggestions: You could try asking Google to reindex your Twitter profile page by suggesting it on their "suggest URL" page. You might also try setting your Twitter to private for a while, to see if that triggers a reindex.
posted by gemmy at 9:11 PM on September 28, 2010

It'll never disappear from Google entirely, but you can push it off the front page by doing lots of other google-worthy things: start a blog, tumblr, flickr, etc.

You probably want to make sure your Tweets are employer safe at least for the foreseeable future, or possibly start a second username for more personal stuff.
posted by Oktober at 9:11 PM on September 28, 2010

Would making your Twitter account private do the trick? Or scouring all your tweets and deleting any risque ones?
posted by John Cohen at 9:16 PM on September 28, 2010

Annecdotally, I had the same problem, where I realized searching my full name brought up my Twitter account as one of the first hits. I removed my name on my profile (the URL doesn't involve my full name) about a week or two ago.

Upon searching now, the profile doesn't show up as one of the first hits anymore, but one particular tweet (not sure why that one) still appears on the first page of hits.

So, I'm thinking that it may be possible for Google to re-index the page eventually (or at least so that the search result is very low priorty).

In the meantime, I deleted the more scandalous tweets. You could make your account private until the re-indexing (hopefully) happens.
posted by miss_kitty_fantastico at 9:22 PM on September 28, 2010

Also (and this might be unlikely but who knows) make sure that no one is linking to your Twitter profile using your name.
posted by polexa at 1:07 AM on September 29, 2010