Google Search indexes Bard personal chats

Occurred: September 2023

Google Search started showing user conversations with its Bard chatbot in its search results, raising concerns about loss of privacy and confidentiality and the nature and effectiveness of Google's security.

First discovered by SEO consultant Gagan Ghotra, the results appearing in Google's search engine were limited to conversations users had chosen to share with others, and did not include their usernames. However, it also transpired that some Bard conversations were ranked as Featured Snippets in Google Search in order to answer common search queries.

Google later said it did not intend for Bard shared chats to be indexed by Google Search, and that it was working on blocking them from being indexed.