[thelist] Can the Search Engines find an unlinked page?

[evolt at brasscannon.net]

Quoth "Fred Jones" <fredthejonester at gmail.com>...

> I made a demo site called somesite.com/fred/
> 
> There no link anywhere in the world to that page--in fact that only
> people who ever saw it are me and my client. But he wants me now to
> remove it because he says the search engines will find it and list it.
> I am not opposed to removing it, but I think he's wrong. I see no way
> for any search engine ever to find it. Am I wrong?
> 
> Perhaps since he and I use gmail, Google is reading our email and
> thereby finds it?

No, it's much more straightforward and honest, depending on 
how your web server is configured.

See: "How Google indexed a file with no external link"
 http://seclists.org/bugtraq/2001/Jul/0174.html

 Summary:
 Apache 1.3.20 with Multiviews enabled allows remote requests to
 view directory contents and bypass the index page via a URL
 containing the "M=D" query string.

See what you get if you ask for http://somesite.com/fred?M=D