If a page isn't linked to or directly sumitted to a search engine can it get indexed?

[TakeLessons]

Hey Guys,

I'm curious if there are ways a page can get indexed even if the page isn't linked to or hasn't been submitted to a search engine.

To my knowledge the following page on our website is not linked to and we definitely didn't submit it to Google - but it's currently indexed:

<cite>takelessons.com/admin.php/adminJobPosition/corp</cite>

Anyone have any ideas as to why or how this could have happened? Hopefully I'm missing something obvious

Thanks,

Jon

[SimonCullum]

Hi Jon

This is a strange one, I too haven't found a link to your admin page. There could have been one at some point in the past. Google's bot is rather clever at finding pages on the so-called 'invisible web', so best to request non-indexing of pages that you don't want indexed (covered below).

You're right in thinking that search bots follow links to find and index pages, whether it be an external or internal site link or a sitemap link. They also find pages through actual submissions.

• I'd suggest modifying the Robots tag on your admin page, include a 'NoIndex' just before the NoFollow'.
• Also include a Disallow command in your Robots.txt file for this admin page, and perhaps all pages within the admin section.
• Then, request the URL be removed from Google's index via Google Webmaster Tools ("Site configuration", "Crawler access", "Remove URL").

Hope that helps,

Regards

Simon

[NewGlobalVentures.comSEOTexas]

Hey there Jon.

It seems that it was last indexed almost a month ago on Oct. 21, 2011. I would suggest that you follow Simon's advice on the NoFollow tag.

Additionally, check your GWT to ensure that it is not indexed...If it is, then try to resubmit it to get indexed (I know, I know, it doesn't make sense), but it will send out a message to crawl it. NoFollow, NoIndex tells the spider NOT HERE....Anywho, good luck with that and let us know how it turned out!

Cheers!

P.S. At least it's not indexed in Bing

[TakeLessons]

Thanks for the responses guys!

Are either of you aware of whether or not Google would ever index a page if someone searched for it? For example, say someone did a Google search for the URL I specified above. Would Google ever get curious and then try and crawl it?

Thanks again for taking the time to help out

[SimonCullum]

You're welcome Jon.

That's a good question. I don't know the official answer on that one, though suspect that Google does check to see if the page exists, mainly because often it will be a valid URL that somebody types in the search box instead of the address bar. If Google don't have that page in their index, they'd at least like to consider adding it.

http://www.google.com/addurl.html is the URL adding page for Google as you'll already know. As well as Google relying on people to use this form, they will also, I suspect, crawl URLs that are entered into a search box. Makes sense to me that Google would at least visit these pages searched on, though can't be sure.

Regards

Simon