OT Will search engines find my webpage?

OT

Yesterday I found out when he mailed me a glossy advertisement for the service deparatment that the dealer where I bought a used car 6 months ago made up a webpage with my first and last name as part of the url. And my home address on the page.

I've gone to a lot of trouble to keep my home address out of the phone book and off the web.

My name is in the high level domain area, between www and .com.

Do you think search engines will find it? So far I think they haven't.

Reply to
micky
Loading thread data ...

Hard to say. When I first did web pages, where I list everything, I got a lot of notice, but the web has grown exponentially since then and it's hard to get noticed.

Tell the offended party to take it down but I have a phone line I use for business that is listed at a locksmith's site and no matter what I've done, its still listed and every few months I get a call for a locksmith.

Reply to
Frank

Unless you lied when you set up the domain name, it is a public record.

Google probably knows everything there is to know about you.

Reply to
gfretwell

The first thing I would do is to call the dealer and ask them why they did that and ask them to remove it. Then let them know why you will let everyone possible know not to patronize their business because they don't respect personal privacy.

Reply to
George

If you learn HTML you can put meta tags onyour webpage that speeds things up a lot. Bit here on the topic.

formatting link
If you do your webpageon some word proceesors eg "Word", you can save as a webpage and it puts some in automatically but mostly crap you don't want.

Reply to
harry

I doubt they registered a domain for a guy who bought a used car (or any car for that matter). My guess is that he's on a subdomain, like

formatting link

That's a given, for all of us.

Jon

Reply to
Jon Danniken

When I did my site there was a place to put in key words. My site always comes up on the first or second page of most searches.

formatting link

If interested, I'm taking orders again but only for awhile. Send me the specs and I'll build it. Prices are negotiable.

Jim

Reply to
JimT

here is the html language used in my site for "KEYWORD"

Reply to
JimT

I don't know about all search engines but google ignores 'KEYWORDS' due to their over use. This link mentions the tags they do look at:

formatting link

---john.

Reply to
John Haskey

You noticed "meta names"? :)

My site has been dormate and not coming up as easily anymore. That's okay with me though. I can't handle a lot of business.

Reply to
JimT

This guy does NOT want his page found. It should be easy to get rid of it, or leave a blank page.

There was a day way back in the early browsing Internet, one day I entered my name, gregs page, and found infosearch had found it. I was amazed. That was it, there were no other gregs page. There was a time when google would not recognize my gregs page. Now, when you search gregs page, it's right back there near the top!

Greg

Reply to
gregz

Oh, they'll find it. Google, for instance, has thousands of machines that crawl the web looking for you. Soon, everyone will be able to find you. Dozens of people will come to your house, not all for innocent purposes.

I'd go to the dealership, begin the conversation with "WTF...!!" and fuss like the third monkey on Noah's gangplank.

Reply to
HeyBub

This seems to be a trend with dealers for service, making offers on new cars, etc. From my testing, they don't show up in the public domain and are intended for use by the dealer and recipient only.

Reply to
Ed Pawlowski

Yeah, I'm going to do that, but first I wanted to know how annoyed I should be, and how strongly I should point out to them** that they risk harming a customer.

**Okay, now I'm going to be sure to tale to the Parts and Service Director, instead of someone lower.

I'm 700 miles away so I can't really do that. :(

BTW, when I got to the webpage, there was nothing there except a sruvey they wanted from me, in return for a free but unspecified gift. Thie gift might be a rear-view mirror pine tree air freshener,

And google map instructions on how to get to the dealer. If I managed to buy the car, surely I can get to the dealer again.

I thought maybe I'd be able to take my phone of their every 3 month call-me list, to remind me I need an oil change, but no.

Reply to
micky

And it's so stupid, too, because I know where I live.

It's mostly there, I think, as the heading, the value they entered for the google map directions list, which is also unneeded, because if I went there to buy the car, I know how to go there again.

Thanks, and thanks everyone for the help.

So, question for everyone: Say they take it off today. Has the wayback machine, archive.net I think it is, been crawling the web and found it too, so even if the car dealer takes it off, will it still be there? And more importantly, will it be googleable???

It's not there yet.

(I shoudl have called the car place without waiting to talk to you guys. BTW, there seem to be only 12 people in the country with my first and last name. The car dealer isn't using my middle initial. )

Reply to
micky

Yes, it's just like that.

formatting link
assuming my last name is Mouse.

So they don't have to register the name, and put it on the list of domains google starts crawling from??

How does the DNS find it then?

Reply to
micky

Heck, I've tried to find myself and can't. o_O

TDD

Reply to
The Daring Dufas

So are you saying that the webcrawlers used by search engines looks at the list of registered domain names, when it is crawling?

Reply to
micky

That's what my mother said about me, He's trying to find himself.

Now we can hire a service to do that.

Reply to
micky

If you use your middle initial, there is only one other. I checked out what Google has on you. I was not surprised to see your family, the car you have , and a link to Zillow about your house. What surprised me is the older information like the combination to your high school locker. Oh, and a few comments from your neighbors. Amazing the detail they have.

Reply to
Ed Pawlowski

HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.