Facebook offers users the ability to search for people, pages, groups, events, and more on both the desktop site and mobile app. With billions of users performing searches every day, many wonder if their Facebook search history is private or if others can see what they’ve searched for.
Can Facebook see your search history?
Yes, Facebook can see your entire search history on their platform. As the company that owns and operates the social network, Facebook has access to all user data and activity that happens on their servers, including every search a user makes.
Facebook states in their Data Policy that they collect content, communications, and other information you provide when you use their Products, including when you sign up for an account, create or share content, and message or communicate with others. This includes information about the posts you make, people and accounts you interact with, and the way you use their services.
So any searches you perform on Facebook are visible to and stored by the company. However, Facebook states that they do not sell personal information such as search history. Their use of search data is mainly to improve their services and target advertising.
Can your Facebook friends see your search history?
No, your Facebook friends cannot see your complete search history or searches happening in real-time. Facebook search is private to you by default, meaning other users will not get notifications or suggestions based on the searches you make.
The exception is if you search for a friend’s name. In this case, Facebook may sometimes notify them that you searched for them, such as by showing “John Smith searched for you” in their notifications. However, your friend still cannot see your full history.
Searches visible to friends
There are a couple limited cases where your Facebook searches may be visible to your friends or others:
- Searching in groups: If you search within a group, group members can see these searches.
- Tagging friends in posts: Friends you tag in a post you’re creating will get a notification showing you searched for their name.
- Saved items: If you save a post, page, etc. after searching for it, this may be visible to friends in your activity log or profile depending on your settings.
Other than situations like these, your search history remains private and is not viewable to your Facebook friends or other users.
Can a Facebook Page see who searched for them?
Yes, Facebook Pages have access to some limited analytics about user searches and activity related to their Page. Page owners can see aggregated demographic data about the people who searched for or visited their Facebook Page over a certain time period.
For example, a Page could see the gender, age range, location, and language breakdown of people who searched for them in the last 28 days. They may also see how many new people searched for the Page each day.
However, Pages cannot see individual people’s names, profiles, or full search history related to their Page. The analytics they access are anonymized and aggregated without personally identifying information.
What Pages can see about your searches
- Gender, age range, location, and language of people who searched for them
- Total number of searches for the Page over time
- Number of new people per day searching for the Page
So in summary, while Pages get some analytical data about searches, they cannot identify you personally or view your full search history.
Can a Facebook friend download my search history?
No, regular Facebook users cannot download or access any part of your Facebook search history. Only you and Facebook can see the full history of searches you’ve made.
Facebook does allow users to download an archive of much of the data associated with their own account. This includes posts, messages, photos, reactions, and other personal activity. However, your Facebook search history is not included in the downloadable archive.
Friends do not have any way to request or download your search history. Facebook considers search history private information only visible to you as the user and to Facebook themselves.
What friends can download from Facebook
- Their own timeline posts, photos, videos
- Messages they sent and received
- Their own search history
Friends have no ability to see or download your searches made on Facebook.
Is Facebook search history really private?
While Facebook states that they keep search history private, there have been a few instances where search data was exposed:
- A bug in 2018 allowed users to see search history of their Facebook friends.
- Facebook’s API allowed some third-party apps to access friend search history.
- A 2021 data leak exposed records of users’ searches, but Facebook maintained the data was scraped illegally.
In these cases, Facebook maintained the exposure of search data was unintentional and fixed the issues to prevent it from happening again. Overall, they take measures to keep search history private, though occasional bugs have allowed limited visibility.
Can you delete your Facebook search history?
Yes, you can delete your entire search history on Facebook from within your account settings:
- Go to your Facebook Settings
- Click on “Your Facebook Information” in the left menu
- Select “Activity Log”
- Click “Search” to view your search history
- Click the three dots beside each search term and select “Delete”
- You can also select “Clear Searches” at the top to delete the entire history
Deleting your search history removes the searches from your Activity Log and deletes the terms from Facebook’s records. However, it’s important to note that Facebook may still use past aggregate search data internally, even once deleted.
Other ways to increase search privacy
- Turn off search history storing in settings
- Use private/incognito browsing
- Don’t search for people’s names you know
- Be cautious searching controversial or explicit keywords
In addition to deleting your history, you can take proactive measures like these to better protect your search privacy.
Conclusion
In summary, while Facebook collects your search history data to improve their services and ads, they generally keep this information private and do not allow others to access it.
Facebook friends, Pages, and third-party apps cannot view or download your full search history. Only you and Facebook can access the complete history.
You do have the ability to view your search history within your Facebook account settings, and delete individual terms or the full history. Overall Facebook does make efforts to keep search activity private, though occasional bugs have exposed limited search data in the past.
By deleting your history and avoiding suspicious searches, you can minimize risks and feel more secure that your Facebook search information remains private.