If you use a public visibility setting on a post, the post will be visible to everyone, even people who aren’t Fediverse members. This means the post may be indexed by search engines, but there is something you can do to stop it.
Also, by default Mastodon profiles can be indexed by search engines as they are public too.
How to prevent a post being visible to search engines
The surest and safest way to prevent a post ending up on a search engine’s index is to use a non-public visibility setting. Posts and replies that have their visibility set to “Followers-only” or “Mentions-only” cannot be seen by search engines, so they cannot be indexed by them. Click here to find out how to adjust your post visibility settings.
How to ask search engines not to index your profile
Mastodon has an option to request that search engines don’t index your profile page:
- Log in through your server’s website or web app
- Click on your profile image to go to your profile page
- Click on Edit Profile
- Click on the Privacy & Reach tab at the top of the page
- Scroll down to the box marked “Include profile page in search engines”, and UN-tick this box
- Click the Save changes button at the bottom of the screen
However, bear in mind that regardless of their legal obligations, there is nothing technically stopping search engines from indexing everything they can see on the internet, even if they don’t have consent. For that reason, it’s best not to put sensitive information on your profile.
But the law says search engines are supposed to obey people’s wishes about not being indexed?
Indeed, but unfortunately the massive tech companies that run search engines do not always obey the law.
What does the other option “Include public posts in search results” do?
There is another option in the settings just above the one about profiles. However, despite the similar wording this other option is nothing to do with search engines. If you tick the box marked “Include public posts in search results”, it will allow your public posts to appear in search results within Mastodon rather than external search engines. See the guide to full text search for more info on this.