my ‘real’ name is showing up alongside my blog when i Google my blog name (or my name) , how to remove this

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  adarksafeplace · Member · Jul 9, 2019 at 8:01 pm

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  as per topic, if i google the name of my blog, it shows up with my full, actual name as the hyperlink

  similarly, if i google my full, real name (yes, i know that’s vain!) the first link is my blog.

  given the personal nature of some of the memories and experiences i’m blogging about, i could really do with removing this association with my real name, however i cannot find anywhere on my prifle or blog where i’ve entered my real name…so i’m at a loss as to how this can be changed / removed

  any help with this would be much appreciated, the alternative would be to remove my blog & since its been going since 2012 i’d rather not do that

  thanks in advance
  B

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

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  taratabrizi · Member · Jul 9, 2019 at 9:16 pm

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  Hi there,

  There’s two places I think that would typically come from. The first one is your profile, so that was a good place for you to check. The second is your Site Title under Manage > Settings > General > Site Title. Have you changed your name on your profile, or have you changed your Site Title recently?

  If you’ve made any changes to either of those, I do know that it can take some time for Google to recognize any changes. Google has a way for you to request that they update outdated content or remove personal information. You can request that the content be updated by following the steps found at this link:

  https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/6349986?hl=en

  Hope this helps!

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  adarksafeplace · Member · Jul 10, 2019 at 7:31 am

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  Hi, thanks for your reply, unfortunatly neither seem to be the root cause of this. I’ve not changed the site title since i first created the site, and have changed the name on my profile (and my gravatar) at least a year ago, but i’m still appearing on google! surely it wouldn’t take that long to remove outdated content?

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  kokkieh · Staff · Jul 10, 2019 at 8:27 am

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  Hi there,

  We have no control over how Google and other search engines index your site, or what information they display.

  The only way they’d have your real name is if you at some point had it published on your site or in your public Gravatar profile linked to the site. We do not ask for that information when you create a WordPress.com account, so the only way that info could be on your site or account is if you intentionally added it.

  Making changes to that info later, or even deleting or setting a site to private, will not necessarily remove it from search results. It’s up to each individual search engine how often and in which way they update information indexed and cached on their servers, so the only way to get this changed is to contact Google directly as explained above.

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  adarksafeplace · Member · Jul 10, 2019 at 8:55 am

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  ok thanks, as long as i know the root cause & where to go to attempt resolving, that’s a big help.

  I’ve submitted a requrest to google to remove this so I’ll see how this goes. thanks again