Find solution
How many protected areas in the world?

How can Google see password-protected areas of my website?

  • I've password-protected part of my website so that I could put up some info about a project that a friend and I are working on, without anybody else seeing it. I have a vanity search saved on Google for my name. Today I got a Google Alert for one of the new password-protected pages. How is Google able to read my password-protected pages?

  • Answer:

    Google isn't actually seeing the content of these protected pages. Someone who isn't a user will get to the URL for post in question but can't see the content without entering a password. Google can't see the content either (from what I can tell.) As to how Google found out these URLs exist, it looks like an issue with Wordpress. If you look at your About page, in the source code, there are references to that protected page, but they're made invisible with CSS.

joannemerriam at Ask.Metafilter.Com Visit the source

Was this solution helpful to you?

Other answers

If you can edit the HTML for your page, add this to the header: <meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow"> That will stop Google from indexing it and following the links in it.

richg

How does your password protection work? I inherited a site and we noticed things were randomly being deleted and none of the people with access would admit to having done it so I checked the logs and it was google! It had got access to the admin site and was indexing the pages - including delete links. It turned out that whoever built the site originally was using javascript to redirect away unauthenticated users (so with javascript turned off you could access the admin site without being authenticated!)

missmagenta

What do you mean by "password protect"? How did this system work? Is the actual content (not the index of it or how you get to it) something you're trying to protect behind HTTP Basic authentication, or using some sort of login/password system you came up with yourself?

floam

Is your site being published via an RSS or Atom feed? Perhaps your "protected" content is escaping that way?

i_am_joe's_spleen

Sorry. It's a Wordpress blog (but on my own domain) and I clicked their "password protected" thing and put in a password.

joannemerriam

I unfortunately do web development. If you want to memail me a link to the site in question, or a version of it using the same system but without sensitive data, I can probably take a look at it and tell you what the issue was. Also, Google robots.txt and learn how that works. Even if you can't clamp down on what the real issue is, you can at least ask search engines to please not index certain data.

floam

I want Google to index the public pages, and the password protected pages are in the same folder (presumably - I didn't do anything to separate them). How is Google bypassing the password to begin with? Floam, I'm happy to send you the link. Thanks!

joannemerriam

I think the issue is that Google is indexing the pages, and when you click the links, you can see the content -- because you happen to be logged in. But people who are not logged in will not be able to see the content. http://www.google.com/search?q=site:joannemerriam.com+protected if I click any of the resultant links, I see "This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below"

MrSomeone

Have you tried this vanity search on a machine that doesn't have you logged into Google, and is completely stripped of Google tools?

circular

Load more

Related Q & A:

Just Added Q & A:

Find solution

For every problem there is a solution! Proved by Solucija.

  • Got an issue and looking for advice?

  • Ask Solucija to search every corner of the Web for help.

  • Get workable solutions and helpful tips in a moment.

Just ask Solucija about an issue you face and immediately get a list of ready solutions, answers and tips from other Internet users. We always provide the most suitable and complete answer to your question at the top, along with a few good alternatives below.