Stats page can be found in Google

[neo_brown]

I can now find my stats when I search for my domain in Google. Nothing new here, I have heard many people complain about this before and I assume that I can remedy the situation by messing about a little with the htaccess. What bothers me is how the page ever came to be indexed by Google in the first place. I have no links to it, I certainly have not submitted it and it shouldnt be possible to spider to it from my site or anywhere else, since access is password reliant. Any Ideas?

[BwanaZulia]

Do you have referrals as links in your stats? Have you ever clicked on them? If you have, you would have registered them in another sites stats which might have been in a search engine.

Just a theory.

BZ

[karmov]

If you use the Google toolbar, or someone who visits you stats uses the google toolbar, G will know about it as well...

[Leosghost]

This is basically one of the ways to find what keywords etc your competitors are being found on that I was explaining/hinting to "grasshopper" in a recent thread on ecommerce...

You'd be amazed how much google really has in there ..just gotta know how to ask ;)

also a really good way to find who to link to is to look at who actually does feed ( and not just link to ) your competition ....

s'not really strictly speaking hacking google to get this stuff ..but it's amazing the number of link to download pages of e-products there are out there ..password files etc ...

[neo_brown]

Thanks for the feedback.

I dont think I have followed any links from my stats page.

I do use the tool bar, is it really that invasive? I appreciated that they may use the toolbar to gather information on pages within their index but I didnt think they would actually use it to spider fresh content. Gotta say though, this does seem like the most likely cause at present and baring in mind whats been said its a little worrying.

[dcrombie]

If your stats are publicly accessible then you are a sitting duck for 'log spammers'. I'm sure they have ways of getting your stats into all the search engines so they can bump up their PR.

You should always use .htaccess or equivalent to block access to the stats directory.

[neo_brown]

Funnily enough I was aware of this and have been keeping an eye on my logs. I blocked my stats page as soon as I saw it was accessible. Yesterday I noticed an unusual amount of referrals from a particular domain I have never heard of. I checked it out and there is no link to my site on the page. I then checked their other backlinks and they were all from stats pages running the same software as my own.
I also had a referral from
snipped
Anyone know what this is all about?

[edited by: DaveAtIFG at 5:47 pm (utc) on Aug. 3, 2004]
[edit reason] No specifics please [/edit]

[neo_brown]

Sorry I did not think the URL I entered would be a problem.
I only put it there as it was a rather strange thing to see. I appreciate the whole log spamming thing and how it works but I did not understand why someone would try to put a link with the following format in my logs.
[mysite.com...]
(the site after the slash is not involved im sure since they are a well know search engine)

Perhaps the way I worded the post my have caused some confusion.

[dcrombie]

Because some stats programs see that as a request for a page called 'www.someoneelsessite.com' and turn it into a link which in turn generates higher PR for the spammer.

[neo_brown]

Sorry to go on and on with this, furthermore Ill make this the last post.
Whoever did this did not only put a link to their domain, they also did it to a well know search engine as well. Was this just charity? Do they perhaps feel they have had a hard time in the search engine wars? Who knows.
I was jut curious if there was perhaps some point to this that I missed.
Thanks for all the info guys.