Gallery will not become private through Google

crockett

The following gallery (and a couple others I have) so up on a google search. I want them to be private.

http://www.smugmug.com/gallery/5266117_eQEQE#360428862_YKUcn

However, no matter how I set the gallery (unlisted, hide owner yes/no) etc. , password protect it still zips right into the gallery.

I've tried clearing the browers cache as well, both history and temporary internet files.

How do I stop people from linking to this and other galleries I have that used to be public but I now want private?

Thanks.

Andrew Maiman

If they were public before, they're already in the search engines. Google will eventually remove it the next time it crawls the site and sees that it's now excluded from search results, but anyone who still has the URL can access it.

You have two choices:

1) Password protect the gallery. (You won't get the password prompt if you're logged into your account or have already entered the password, log out and clear your cookies to test that it's working properly)
2) Create a new album and move the contents of your old album into it, then delete the old album. Make sure the new one is Unlisted when you create it. That will invalidate the old URL.

ivar

Andrew Maiman wrote:

2) Create a new album and move the contents of your old album into it, then delete the old album. Make sure the new one is Unlisted when you create it. That will invalidate the old URL.

Yes, however, be aware that the links directly to the photo do not change. If you password protect the galleries, this is not an issue any more, of course.

jfriend

crockett wrote:

The following gallery (and a couple others I have) so up on a google search. I want them to be private.

http://www.smugmug.com/gallery/5266117_eQEQE#360428862_YKUcn

However, no matter how I set the gallery (unlisted, hide owner yes/no) etc. , password protect it still zips right into the gallery.

I've tried clearing the browers cache as well, both history and temporary internet files.

How do I stop people from linking to this and other galleries I have that used to be public but I now want private?

Thanks.

Now that there exists a link on the internet to your gallery (in your posting above), you should know that all search engines can now find the gallery.

If you really want it so that a search engine never finds your gallery, then you MUST make it an unlisted gallery when you first create it and you and everyone else must never link to it anywhere on the internet. If those two things are not true, then a search engine can find your gallery by simpling crawling the links on the web and eventually running into the link that leads it to your gallery. And, as others have said, once a search engine knows about your gallery, it can take a long time for it to forget about it.

Since it is difficult to ensure that nobody ever links to your gallery, there are additional steps you may take.

1. In customize gallery, you can set Hello World and Hello Smuggers to No. This will tell any search engine that finds your gallery that you really don't want it indexed. A well-behaved search engine will honor that directive, but there still may be ill-behaved search engines that do not honor it.
2. If people have direct links to some of your images and you don't want that any more, you can set "External Links" to No.
3. If you want to guarentee that all search engines are kept out, then a password on the gallery is the ONLY way to do that for sure. Keep in mind that a password will not keep direct links to your images from working. To do that you have to also turn off external linking.
4. Lastly, if you really just want it out of the search index now, but you don't want to use a password on the gallery, then your best bet is to move all the images to a new gallery (that is unlisted and has Hellow World and Hellow Smugmug set to No). The new gallery will have a new URL. Create the new gallery with the right settings. Then, either move all the images over to it (you can move them all at once in Photo Tools/Move to Other Gallery) or re-upload them to the new gallery. Then delete the original gallery. At this point, no search engine has a link to your new gallery. If nobody links to it or the search engines follow the rules, it should stay that way.

crockett

Thanks for all the help.