News Source: http://seoroi.com
Published: Mar 28, 2008 - 01:33 pm
Story Found By: Gab 1415 Days ago
Category: Vertical Search
There’s more research to be done though to figure out what’s up. Some of the sites in question had Google Site Search, so there may be a link there, but then again, others don’t use it.
My apologies for jumping to conclusions about GA.
Thought your data was safe? Guess again. I discovered that people using Google analytics to track site searches were having their data leaked into the index!
14 Comments
Comments
I debunked this on the original post: http://seoroi.com/case-studies/google-analytics-is-leaking-our-data-into-googles-index-2/#comment-293
Just approved your comment Matt. Mind sharing the details at SEO ROI so we can get to the bottom of this? If I did indeed make a mistake, I’ll be happy to apologize for it [and any feelings I may have hurt], and change the post title here and at SEO ROI.That said, I still don’t see why there’s site search results in the index?
Oh, and note: I don’t see any of these results on Mike V’s site, and he hasn’t got anything blocked in Robots.txt. [FYI for people reading this: Matt confirmed Mike’s comment about contacting him with this issue, and about Mike not having GA tracking on his site. But as per my note above, in this same comment, I don’t see any site-search results when i query google for site:smackdown. So there may be a debunking, but it hasn’t quite happened yet. If/when it happens, like I said, I’ll gladly acknowledge my mistake and publish a correction.]
Hey Gab, I’ve emailed a few people here and gotten a definitive answer that Google Analytics has nothing to do with those urls. I’m waiting to hear back from a few other people with more info, but it might take a day or so (some people are asleep and at least one person I’d like to hear from is out on vacation until Monday). But I will try to get an answer for you either here or on email..
I saw the same type of URLs indexed before, I didn’t go the conspiracy route, don’t have analytics installed so that wasn’t it.Disallow: /?s=Seemed to fix everything in no time.
I see a different Sphinn number for this article on your site and here. Yours is consistently 1 more. (Sorry, now I see it has to do with desphinn.)
Perhaps you should try changing the Title of the Sphinn Gabs until the proper reason is unearthed.
Is it not just Wordpress pinging google?
Why would wordpress ping google on a search?
Not sure but you never know.....
I’ve updated the title to more accurately reflect what’s going on, and apologize for the error. Also, kudos to Mike VanDeMar for clarifying stuff, and to Matt Cutts for checking out what’s going on at the ’plex. On that note keep an eye on Mike’s blog - my understanding is that he may release some code to hide your site searches without blocking them in robots.txt. I’m no coder, but it seems pretty innovative and superior to a straight-out robots block.Stay tuned!
Gab, your original point is worthy - while the site in question isn’t running GA, certainly I’m seeing it elsewhere.
A commenter (Michael V) has seen similar urls appear and doesn’t use Google Analytics on his site at all.
There seems to be a mistake as Matt Cutts has debunked it