Be Careful With Bard: Google Search Showing Private Chatbot Snippets

pcmag.com:

One of the nifty features of Google Bard is the ability to share chatbot conversation links with other people, which folks can use to continue talking with Bard.

Those snippet links are supposed to be private, but they've started showing up in Google Search results. Google Search Liaison Danny Sullivan says Google is working on a fix.

In general, a chatbot log is private between Google Bard and the person using it. A person can generate a share link and send snippets of their conversations to friends, family members, and other people. While Google does not recommend using any personally identifiable information in your Google Bard interactions, the content of those links are supposed to stay private.

As SEO consultant Gagan Ghotra noted earlier today, however, "Google started to index share conversation URLs of Bard [and] Bard's conversation URLs are ranking as snippets for some queries as well." Ghotra warned people not to share any personal information with Bard because "someone [may] arrive on that conversation from search and see your info."

Google's Sullivan responded to Ghotra's tweet to say: "Bard allows people to share chats, if they choose. We also don't intend for these shared chats to be indexed by Google Search. We're working on blocking them from being indexed now."

Until that happens, head to the Google Bard website, open settings, and click where it says public links, where there's an option to remove all links. This won't delete your Bard history, but it will delete any of the links you created and prevent them from showing up in Google Search.

You can also check out the snippets showing up in Google Search by going to site:bard.google.com/share, Search Engine Land reports.

Earlier this year, a bug with