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Deleting Old Threads

 
Greenhorn
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Hi,

I have posted questions before and when I do a google search I see my username displayed in the search results with the question. Please could you tell me how I can remove my name from web engine searches or from Java Ranch all together? I do not want my name to appear in web engine searches and this is currently occuring,

Thanks for any information,
 
Sheriff
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Welcome to the Internet. Anything you post on the net is likely to remain in the caches of search engines for a long time to come.
 
Sheriff
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There are also sites that archive older versions of websites so, even if you are able to remove every post you've ever made here, it may still be possible for someone to see an archived version of a page with your name on it.
 
Wanderer
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One thing you can do is change your display name here at the ranch. Just go to "My Profile" at the top of the page. (Except you're probably talking about a different account, so you'll probably have to log out and log in to the other account.) And please make sure that the new name complies with our naming policy - don't use an obvious pseudonym You old posts will then appear with the new name. Except (a) there will initially be some caching of the old name, that will go away with time (or when the threads are refreshed for some reason). And (b) if any other posters referred to you by name, including quoting you, that old name will remain. That's not your text to control; that's theirs. Gradually the new versions of the pages should displace the old versions in most search engines. But we really don't control how long various search engines hold on to old info. So you can expect that you will gradually reduce the occurrances of your old name - but completely removing them may well be impossible. I hope that helps...
 
Ranch Hand
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That's very true Jim.

But to what extent we may have a control on the search engines over the web? I really wonder on this front!
 
author
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Originally posted by Raghavan Muthu:
That's very true Jim.

But to what extent we may have a control on the search engines over the web? I really wonder on this front!



As a website owner, you can ask for your website to be totally removed from search engines and archives.

As an individual posting on someone else's site, your best guess is to assume that it might be publicly available forever, I guess.
 
Raghavan Muthu
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Thank you Ilja. I agree with you. But is that practically feasible to convey the same to all the available search engines? The way the search engine picks up our website is its job and nothing is required to be manually done.

But the reverse is quite cumbersome and tedious process right?
 
Ilja Preuss
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Not getting it crawled in the first place is not that problematic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robots_Exclusion_Standard

Getting it out of archives once it has been crawled might be more cumbersome, yes.
 
Raghavan Muthu
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Thanks Ilja
 
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