Dear WordPress, I have been trying to ‘

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  emsle · Member · Apr 21, 2018 at 2:47 am

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  Dear WordPress,

  I have been trying to ‘hide’ my website from search engines. When Googling my First and Last name, my website still pops up even when I have removed my First and Last name from my profile page. My Public Display Name is only my first name now (very generic and common). I have also changed my privacy setting to ‘Hidden’ yet it has not made a difference. What more can I do?

  The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

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  ravichahar · Member · Apr 21, 2018 at 4:24 am

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  Hey emsle,

  Your website is published which means anyone can access it and it has already been indexed by Google.

  Google has stored the details of your website in its cache. When you first started it, it was indexed the way your settings were.

  As you have mentioned, you have set the privacy settings to “hidden”. It means Google bots will not crawl your website from now onwards but the pages which have already been indexed are stored in the Google cache.

  And we don’t have any access to that cache.

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  emsle · Member · Apr 23, 2018 at 5:50 am

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  Thank you Ravichahar for the response.

  Would this mean if someone wanted to turn anonymous now, it’s impossible? As Googling (for example) the person’s previous profile name would link directly to the website.

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  ravichahar · Member · Apr 23, 2018 at 6:01 am

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  As I have mentioned above, we have no control over Google cache and its indexing. Google may or may not clear the website from its cache.

  Sometimes it takes months to accomplish this. No one can say anything about it. WordPress.com can only give the signal to the Google bots for not indexing your website but it can’t change the status of the already indexed pages.

  You can only wait.