Google Spy

I’d wonder about her nameservers. If she bought the domain name, and didn’t purchase privacy, then yeah, her full name (address *and* telephone number) is there in public record for all to see.

This is pretty much why people who wish to remain anonymous when blogging will use a service like WordPress.com, or Blogger.com.

Also, if anyone knows who she is, and knows this is her blog, *they* could have associated her blog to her site on their own site. Google would have picked it up. Or, if she wasn’t thinking and linked it to herself somewhere else, Google will pick it up.

Google doesn’t spy. It just reads links and info that’s out there. I’d say she just overlooked something, and there you have it.

I understand Google doesn’t spy, but I was surprised to find they have indexed content that doesn’t exist on the page, or to my mind the site. I know Google uses links to the site to calculate page rank but I didnt think it would affect the indexed words for the site.

I have done a whois and her name isn’t in the domain information. I can think of no explanation other than google is wordpress aware, and that wordpress exposes the author/users first and last name via a webpage or api? I just dont know where?

Google is aware of *anything* you put in the web. If it’s linked to, Google will eventually get to it. If it’s on your server, and you’re not actively restricting access, Google will find it.

WordPress doesn’t expose anything that you don’t allow it to. If the site is coded to allow people to see the author’s name and/or profile (and the info is in the public profile) then yes, Google will find it.

I think the best chance of discovering how Google has associated her name to the site is to find out who is linking to her site, and if they know her. You can look at the domain referers and see who’s linking to her, or you can find links directly to her site by going to Google and putting in “link:www.domainname.com” (and other variations, using http: and no www) and anyone who’s using that link on their site will come up.

But no, Google will see her public site and index it. Google can’t see the admin area and index that – it’s password protected (and Google can’t get in password-protected areas). So she’s either accidentally exposed herself on the site, or someone who knows who she is (and also knows it’s her blog) has connected the two somewhere with a link. But WordPress doesn’t “leak” any information that you don’t allow it to.

I understand Google will index everything. I also imagine Google detects blog type, and tunes its indexing process accordingly.

I am not saying WordPress has leaked any information it shouldn’t have. My query is does it expose information about an author or user by default? The only place the persons name appears is on the admin author screen. No linking websites include the name ( Even if it did, I doubt google would add it to the indexed terms for this website. It should only count for the website with the name on!).

So really my question is, does information you input on the author screen in wordpress get exposed publicly on some page or API?

If not, then I will look elsewhere for the reason.

RestlessDreamer, Google does indeed take inbound links into account when determining the relevance of keywords to a site. That’s how Google bombing works. I’ll bet that her name appears in links pointing to her site, creating an unintentional link bomb.

She can combat this by using her full name on various other places on the web, which will draw the search engines away from her anonymous blog.