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Ask HN: Does Chrome submit URLs you visit to the Google search indexer?
Today I surprisingly found a page in a Google search I was looking through, but I know I'm the only person who could have possibly visited the page.
The page was a debugging URL I was using to monitor some server activity, and I never shared it with anyone or pasted it in any chat interface. It is even running on a non-standard port, so even visiting the root domain wouldn't lead a crawler to it.
Is it possible that Chrome is submitting URLs I visit to be indexed by the Google search bots?
- js4all 14y agoWas it listed on the result page or did you get it as an auto-completion result? This first is unlikely, the second is normal as Chrome mixes in local results from the history store and the bookmark store.
- aaronpk 14y agoIt was listed on the result page on google.com
- raquo 14y agoYes, in my experience this continued even after unchecking all possible preferences. But last I've tried it was Chrome 17 or so. Try chromium or disallowing a folder or whole root in /robots.txt
- justhw 14y agoHighly possible, if you've not changed the settings in chrome://chrome/settings/ to not submit anything. To prevent future leaks, uncheck all in your chrome privacy settings except the `Send Do not Track`
- 27182818284 14y agoI'm a little skeptical of this because tons of people use obscure URLs for delete links or confirmation links. Wouldn't people see tons of entries in logs of Google hitting confirmation links and havoc being created by Google hitting one-time links for, say, deleting a file? It just feels like one of those things that if it were true, would have already been at the top of Hacker News several times.