[wp-edu] Uploads folder content indexed in Google?

Wed Sep 16 20:23:53 UTC 2015

Great!

I just went down this road here at Georgian Court.
We launched our new site about a month ago, and old media files were coming up in search results. Our old media directory was /uploadedFiles (thousands of .pdfs, .jpgs, etc.)

I built the new site from scratch, as if we never had a website, so any files that went on the new site were provided by their department, guaranteeing that they were the most updated.

Wordpress does not use this directory, so I blocked the directory in webmaster tools/Remove URLs and Disallow: /uploadedFiles/ in robots.txt

I am currently going through analytics/content drill down to find other unused directories. I also took screen shots of our old web directory structure. Comparing the two, I can remove additional directories.

Glad this worked out for you Ben.

Richard Berardi
Web Administrator
Marketing & Communications
Georgian Court University
900 Lakewood Ave.
Lakewood, NJ 08701
p: 732-987-2469<tel:732-987-2469>
e: rberardi at georgian.edu<mailto:rberardi at georgian.edu>

From: wp-edu <wp-edu-bounces at lists.automattic.com<mailto:wp-edu-bounces at lists.automattic.com>> on behalf of Ben Bakelaar <bakelaar at rutgers.edu<mailto:bakelaar at rutgers.edu>>
Reply-To: "Low-traffic list discussing WordPress in education." <wp-edu at lists.automattic.com<mailto:wp-edu at lists.automattic.com>>
Date: Wednesday, September 16, 2015 at 4:04 PM
To: "Low-traffic list discussing WordPress in education." <wp-edu at lists.automattic.com<mailto:wp-edu at lists.automattic.com>>
Cc: "jon.oliver at rutgers.edu<mailto:jon.oliver at rutgers.edu>" <jon.oliver at rutgers.edu<mailto:jon.oliver at rutgers.edu>>
Subject: Re: [wp-edu] Uploads folder content indexed in Google?

Yes, that was it! Thanks Richard.

Created robots.txt file:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /wp-content/uploads/sites/7/

Tested with Fetch as Googlebot. Went to Google Index > Remove URLs within Google Webmaster Tools. Clicked on “Create a new removal request”. Entered directory name only:
/wp-content/uploads/sites/7[https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/images/url_icon.png]<http://eclipse.rutgers.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/7>

On the next screen, the third option on the drop-down menu is “Remove directory” which normally is not there if you enter a full URL. Submitted and pending!

I also turned off “Indexes” in httpd.conf, not sure if it was on for “all” sub-sites before. But that’s my working theory, that directory listings were turned on and somehow search bots got to those pages and then they indexed each file and sub-dir listed.

I guess my outdated conception was that search engine bots only scour the web via finding extant links within HTML documents – so if there is no public link to that content, it will never get indexed. It appears they may be more aggressive now, using algorithms to predict sub-directories (perhaps based on CMS detection?) and then scan for available content? Just a working theory since I still can’t explain it.

---------------------------------
BEN BAKELAAR | IT Services
School of Communication and Information
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
p 848.932.8710

From: wp-edu [mailto:wp-edu-bounces at lists.automattic.com<mailto:wp-edu-bounces at lists.automattic.com>] On Behalf Of Berardi, Richard
Sent: Tuesday, September 15, 2015 9:22 PM
To: Low-traffic list discussing WordPress in education.
Cc: jon.oliver at rutgers.edu<mailto:jon.oliver at rutgers.edu>
Subject: Re: [wp-edu] Uploads folder content indexed in Google?

Removing an entire directory or site

In order for a directory or site-wide removal to be successful, the directory or site must be disallowed in the site's robots.txt file<http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35302>. For example, in order to remove the http://www.example.com/secret/ directory, your robots.txt file would need to include:
   User-agent: *
   Disallow: /secret/
It isn't enough for the root of the directory to return a 404 status code, because it's possible for a directory to return a 404 but still serve out files underneath it. Using robots.txt to block a directory (or an entire site) ensures that all the URLs under that directory (or site) are blocked as well. You can test whether a directory has been blocked correctly using either the Fetch as Googlebot<http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=158587> or Test robots.txt<http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=156449> features in Webmaster Tools.

Only verified owners of a site can request removal of an entire site or directory in Webmaster Tools. To request removal of a directory or site, click on the site in question, then go to Site configuration > Crawler access > Remove URL. If you enter the root of your site as the URL you want to remove, you'll be asked to confirm that you want to remove the entire site. If you enter a subdirectory, select the "Remove directory" option from the drop-down menu.

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/03/url-removal-explained-part-i-urls.html?m=1

Hope this helps.

Sent from my  iPhone 6

On Sep 15, 2015, at 5:59 PM, Ben Bakelaar <bakelaar at rutgers.edu<mailto:bakelaar at rutgers.edu>> wrote:
Hello all, it appears we have had some of the files on our Wordpress network indexed in Google search results. I had assumed security through obscurity here, but it appears I was wrong.

Our network runs sites as sub-directories, and we also use domain mapping for some of them. I haven’t quite figured out how yet, but one of the mapped domains (xyz, not root.url.com<http://root.url.com>) which points to site A has shown up in search results with absolute paths to files in a completely different site B (which is actually a sub-dir site, not masked). And they load just fine – this must be an unanticipated quirk of DNS records + the Wordpress code that routes requests.

So we have URLs like xyz.domain/wp-content/uploads/sites/x/xxxx/xx/filename.doc coming up in results! Eek! I have already started the removal requests via Google Webmaster Tools. Again no explanation yet for how these URLs were located by the search engines, but I’m working on possible theories.

Aside from getting to the bottom of this, I’m trying to figure out the best way to block this from happening in the future. Apache .htaccess rules are one option. Robots.txt could be another? Has anyone run into this issue before, and what have you done as a solution? I’m a little surprised this isn’t addressed “in code”. There are many plugins that allow uploads, this is a desired and supported user behavior by default. But there are no conceivable use cases I can think of where those uploads should be able to be indexed by bots.

Could I simply place robots.txt in the root of the WP codebase, and tell it to avoid indexing ALL files under /wp-content? Would that cover all the various access cases with direct-linked files (like graphics), domain masking/mapping, etc.? And to fully prevent opening any uploads from outside the university network (as a decent but arbitrary perimeter), can I do the same with .htaccess or do I have to make dozens of .htaccess files per /wp-content/uploads/sites/X – in each little sub-directory?

---------------------------------
BEN BAKELAAR | IT Services
School of Communication and Information
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
p 848.932.8710

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