Re: How Google indexed a file with no external link

From: W. Craig Trader (ct7at_private)
Date: Tue Jul 10 2001 - 07:15:19 PDT

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    Kevin ...
    
    I can tell you what's causing it, and how to disable it, but I can't 
    point you to specific documentation about it.
    
    Kevin wrote:
    
    > 
    > Looking a bit deeper, I saw googlebot (and later, some ordinary vistors)
    > using this syntax:
    > 
    > 	http://handsonhowto.com/?M=A
    > 	http://handsonhowto.com/?S=D
    > 
    > ...and if you try this yourself in Internet Explorer, you'll find that 
    > Apache is ignoring my index.html and is giving you a formatted directory 
    > of the docroot directory as though there were no index page.
    > 
    > The differences between the ?M and the ?S versions are not blatantly
    > obvious, at least not to me.
    
    
    This is a "feature" of the Apache autoindex module:
    
    http://httpd.apache.org/docs/mod/mod_autoindex.html
    
    When you turn on FancyIndexing, the index page includes links for 
    sorting the directory by Name, file Size, Modification date/time, etc. 
    You can disable this by setting IndexOptions +SuppressColumnSorting
    for any/all directories that have indexing enabled.  These links are 
    apparently interpreted by apache even if the directory has an index 
    page.  Bad Apache -- no biscuit.
    
    > <Directory />
    >     Options FollowSymLinks
    >     AllowOverride None
    > </Directory>
    > 
    > <Directory /home/http/bcc/images>
    >     Order Deny,Allow
    >     Deny from All
    >     AllowOverride AuthConfig
    > </Directory>
    > 
    > <Directory "/home/http">
    >     Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
    >     AllowOverride None
    >     Order allow,deny
    >     Allow from all
    > </Directory>
    > 
    > <IfModule mod_dir.c>
    >     DirectoryIndex index.html
    > </IfModule>
    > 
    > <IfModule mod_autoindex.c>
    >     IndexOptions FancyIndexing
    > # Bunch of defaults provided by Apache - snipped
    >     ReadmeName README
    >     HeaderName HEADER
    >     IndexIgnore .??* *~ *# HEADER* README* RCS CVS *,v *,t
    > </IfModule>
    
    I would recommend reading the auto_index module docs and altering your 
    settings for <Directory "/home/httpd"> accordingly.
    
    - Craig -
    
    -- 
    ============= Excellence is a journey, not a destination =============
    =============== W. Craig Trader <ct7at_private> ===============
    



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