Why is my hidden gallery on Google???

eoren1

So I just did a search using my name on Google to see how my blog ranked. Got to page 5 and found a link from a site called fwix that I had never heard of. Clicked and was sent to an unlisted gallery on my site. Confirmed that it is set for no to Hello World, etc... Please let me know why this happened and how to prevent it. Otherwise, I will likely need to delete many of the galleries I use for posts on this forum (as they include unwatermarked images from my blog and others that are test images or otherwise not meant for the public)
E

Copied from Google:
Eyal Oren (eoren1)'s photo - SF Bay Area Metro, CA Local News - Fwix
Eyal Oren (eoren1) ... Search nearby places and trends... Search · Hide. Share. Next Previous. Eyal Oren (eoren1)'s photo. Quantcast.
fwix.com/photos/814095/eyal_oren_eoren1s_photo - Cached

jfriend

When you make a gallery unlisted, that just means that Smugmug won't make the gallery URL available to the public or to search engines via your Smugmug site.

If you pass the gallery URL to other people and they put it somewhere public or you put the URL yourself in some public location, then all bets are off and a search engine may get the URL from one of those non-Smugmug sites. Direct image links (like you would embed in a blog) do not give away the gallery.

Also, if you put the URL in your own Smugmug customization, Google may see it there.

So, keeping unlisted galleries out of search engines depends upon the privacy of the URL. Making it unlisted is a directive to Smugmug for Smugmug to NOT make the gallery URL available to the public. But Smugmug's responsibility only covers what it does with the URL, not what you or someone you give it to does with the URL.

eoren1

Thanks John
That makes a lot of sense. I assumed that the Hello World setting worked 'no matter what'. I see now that sharing a link on dgrin would override this as the link there would be picked up by the Google robots. Thanks for enlightening me. I'll have to run through my galleries and figure out which to keep/delete.
E