Facebook has announced the removal of "Who can look up my timelines by name?" search settings. Users who have access to the setting will receive a reminder saying that the setting is being retired below the Facebook search bar.

Last year in December, Facebook announced that it will replace the search setting with new controls to let users manage their content.

Facebook said, "Who can look up my timeline by name?” setting was automatically retired for users who were no longer taking advantage of it, with the “small percentage of people” still using the search setting able to access it for a limited amount of time".

"Who Can Look Up My Timeline By Name?” Facebook Search Settings to Retire Soon!

The setting allowed users to control if they could be found when a searcher typed their name on the search bar. However, after the introduction of Facebook's Graph Search, it was said that the search setting no longer fitted the advanced search capabilities of the site. 

"The setting was created when Facebook was a simple directory of profiles and it was very limited. For example, it didn’t prevent people from navigating to your Timeline by clicking your name in a story in News Feed, or from a mutual friend’s Timeline. Today, people can also search Facebook using Graph Search (for example, “People who live in Seattle,”) making it even more important to control the privacy of the things you share rather than how people get to your timeline".

Facebook says that if you want to control who can see your content in a better manner, you should select the audience for individual post from the drop-down audience menu present at the bottom right-hand corner of the post box. Facebook also claims that users who share their posts publicly will see the reminder that their post can no longer be seen by anyone, unless the audience setting is changed for individual post.

"Who Can Look Up My Timeline By Name?” Facebook Search Settings to Retire Soon!

Facebook has also advised users to visit the privacy settings page and limit the audience with whom they have shared the posts in the past.

"Who Can Look Up My Timeline By Name?” Facebook Search Settings to Retire Soon!

In order to manage content more effectively, users should share the post with people they specifically want to see it. They should frequently visit the Activity Log to find out what is being shared and also ask friends to delete the content that they don't want to be shared.

Author

Navneet Kaushal is the Editor-in-Chief of PageTraffic Buzz. A leading search strategist, Navneet helps clients maintain an edge in search engines and the online media. Navneet is also the CEO of SEO Services company PageTraffic which is one of the leading search marketing company in Asia.