Idle curiosity: how does Google find sites and pages that have no inbound links?

[zulubanshee]

I have built sites and put lorem ipsum text in as place holder. Then when I put in the real text I find that google has indexed the lorem ipsum text. If the site has no inbound links, and the domain was not indexed before, and it has not been otherwise submitted through Google webmaster tools, analytics or that url submission form I used to use, how on earth does Google know it's there?

I've had similar issues with individual pages I thought were private on sites. There are no inbound links at all. Does Google keep track of where you navigate?

[Dice79]

Google Tool Bar, Another Toolbar, Logged into Google (Google +), Gmail, Twitter, Facebook, Google Analytics, Domain Register (Google is one), and possibly just doing a Google search.

[pauld123]

Hi,

Yes they do.

The more they know about your online activity the better they can target ads. Personally I have no problem with it but I can understand that there are some serious privacy issues at work. Because I am using Chrome and am logged in, everywhere I go is recorded somewhere and analysed. If you are concerned there are plugins and addons that can help to stop the tracking and help to make your activities private (or mostly private).
Google wants every page to be indexed, so if they find you went to a page that is not indexed, they will index it.
The only way to keep a page private is to put it behind a password protected area (and not use google stuff like chrome or toolbars or search etc etc).

[zulubanshee]

Good stuff to know.

[NewDelhiSEO]

Google can index your website from
1. Your emails
2. Registrar information
3. Chrome Browser Usage
4. Any queries you make to Google APIs with your domain
5. Apart from all the regular methods.

[realityhack]

The 'funny' thing is that Google swore up and down it wouldn't use toolbar data that way but I know someone who did a serious test and found they did.

[NewDelhiSEO]

The 'funny' thing is that Google swore up and down it wouldn't use toolbar data that way but I know someone who did a serious test and found they did.

The last time they had this privacy policy / user agreement update they did a lot of hocus pocus. We just scroll and say OK, we hardly ever read. They now share a lot of data across various products.

[KernelPanic]

I have had sites we're building on our dev server indexed. Invasive? You betcha