Facebook Opening You To Google

Users of Facebook will have their profiles indexed by the likes of Google and Yahoo unless they opt to keep their listings from appearing in search engines.

Profiles in social networking sites like Facebook have caused trouble for people whose prospective employers searched for them on those services. Such searches for people on Facebook will get a lot easier in the coming weeks.

Facebook will begin permitting external search sites to index its public search listings. Upon logging in starting today, Facebook members will be alerted to this change, and given the opportunity to opt out of this.

A public search listing in Facebook shows a person’s name and thumbnail picture. “We think this will help more people connect and find value from Facebook without exposing any actual profile information or data,” Philip Fung said on the Facebook blog.

“The public search listing contains less information than someone could find right after signing up anyway, so we’re not exposing any new information, and you have complete control over your public search listing,” he said.

Previous Facebook changes have generated controversy, particularly when they added feeds that revealed changes one made to a profile to all of their friends. Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg had to offer an apology over that fiasco, which one person called a “stalkeriffic” change to the site.