Warning To Elance Users: Private Documents Can Get Indexed By Google

I noticed the other day when doing a keyword query in Google for one of my private projects a word document I’d attached several months is showing up in the Googles SERPS.

I had attached a word document during one of my regular Private Message Board exchanges. In fact, I uploaded many documents during that exchange but somehow Google indexed it.

When I am outsourcing projects its very common for me to upload Visio’s, Word Doc’s and Excel Documents.

I called and explained my issue with Elance and at first they told me what I was saying was not possible.

I gave them the keyword I used in Google and they remarked at how this never happens. I explained that it did happen and they need to check their server configuration because Google is finding its way to our attachments.

The support guy said “Google has gotten very powerful” and went on to tell me how all mighty and powerful the Google crawler has become. Nice, huh!

This situation sort of reminds me when a few months back a IT guy for a school left a path to their secure documents open and then blamed Google for indexing all their private information for the world to see. If I recall they claimed Google hacked their secure site.

While on the phone with the Elance support rep I gave them the full path to the file (which he also had by looking at the Google result) but he said it was very difficult to remove the file. He even said I should call the provider first and asked them if they did anything to make this happen.

I explained I don’t want to spend all day working on this issue and that they should just remove my file from the server. After a few minutes on the phone I was told that they “think” it should now be removed. Although when I check Google, the file is still there.

I am told it might take a day or so for their system to update and delete the file.

It’s a total pain in the ass, but if you’re using Elance or any service like it, secure all your documents.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 14th, 2007 at 2:17 pm and is filed under SEO / Internet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.