How can I prevent people from...

[Alenci]

...finding my website?

I have a new website, and I don't advertise it. I haven't manually added it to search engines, and there's nothing on it that ought to put it high in search engine result listings, unless one knows what one's searching for. My last website got hits from 16 different time zones. Part of the problem was that I (stupidly) had a link to it on a site where people I didn't know at all would find it, and my guestbook (mysteriously) was added to some website that lists guestbooks. So I had weird people signing and leaving links to porn websites. I've been really careful with this new website, but three or four people with IPs I don't recognize have already visited it.

I'm not really very anxious to make accounts with passwords for my website. It's not anything really, really personal, but I just like privacy.

 

[trunks2k]

Don't put meta tags in the begining to aid search engines. And if you are paying for space, you probably can alter the rules for search engines to keep some of them out in the robots.txt file. Or you can just put a single password on the entire public folder. That way only people you know will be able to get in

 

[ever]

You could try something like MSN Groups. It allows you to create a group with a forum, you can upload pictures, etc. The only downside is that it doesn't allow you to customize the look very much. You can allow only the people you want to join your group, and anyone else needs your apporoval.

http://groups.msn.com/ click the link second down on the right "create your own group"

 

[Tihana]

You can use META-tages to block search engines from indexing your page, I think. The one you're looking for is probably this one:

<META NAME="robots" CONTENT="noindex">

 

[pgp_protector]

Also google robot.txt
setup your robot.txt file to block all robots.

If the site is for your eyes only, you can also setup the directory with your .httaccess file to require a username / password to access the directory.

right now becuse it is out there, and you have no protection, the search engens will find it on there own. Thell search other sites that are linked to yours, follow the link and add your site to the database.

 

[Morrog]

You could also encrypt the entire site. Search engines won't come up with _any_ useful keywords that way.

 

[datan]

use freenet!

that way only the people you give the key to can access your website.

it's encrypted so it's impossible for anyone who doesn't know the key to view your website's contents.

 

[Alenci]

I turned on TechTV this morning and they were going to say how to stop search engines from indexing one's website, but I had to leave for church and missed it. I guess what they were going to say was approximately what you guys told me about the meta tags. Thanks. I will try that.


I suppose now that I should have put this in the webmasters/developers forum, but I didn't notice it until today. Sorry. If someone wants to move it...