It’s already no secret that Facebook has been putting in effort to make Facebook internal pages indexed by Google - this is part and parcel of Google’s thrust to deliver real-time search results from live sources, such as Facebook and Twitter. This would make pages and information generated by Facebook users (yes, that could be you) searchable over the search engine giant.

There is always a huge concern (not to mention risk) whenever a system opens up more of itself to the public, and this is no exception. All the stuff you put in Facebook before (the photos, videos, personal information, etc.) had been relatively confined in Facebook’s secure environment before the Google switch. But with Google keeping a wary eye on everything, it’s going to be harder to keep your information to yourself.

Maybe you posted a picture of yourself in this year’s company Christmas party. Theoretically, someone would be able to find that picture if they Google’d your name. Or any of the people you tagged in the picture. Or even perhaps your company name. Maybe even for “christmas party”, if someone really drilled down their Google search results. Provided that your privacy settings allow for it.

To help address that, Facebook has launched a revamped privacy settings interface for your account, with a wider variety of knobs and turnkeys in an attempt to control your private information better. If you haven’t logged in to Facebook recently, we suggest you do as soon as possible. For most (if not all), a notice will popup in users’ Facebook pages reminding them of the new privacy settings, so it’s hard to miss.

If you happened to miss that, then you can control how Google (and perhaps other search engines) index your information by navigating to Settings > Privacy Settings > Search in your Facebook pages.

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