Can I stop my profile appearing in certain search engines? Baidu specifically
Thread poster: Diana Llorente
Diana Llorente
Diana Llorente  Identity Verified
Spain
Member (2014)
English to Spanish
+ ...
Aug 10, 2017

Hello,

I've recently started to get many visitors in my Proz profile that find me through Baidu. They don't contact me, just keep checking my profile, so I was already worried of what their intentions were.

Today I've received a scam from a company in China and I see that someone has visited my profile around 20 times after finding me in Baidu.

Can I stop my profile appearing in Baidu?

Please let me know, thank you.

Diana


 
Mirko Mainardi
Mirko Mainardi  Identity Verified
Italy
Local time: 20:45
Member
English to Italian
Other thread Aug 10, 2017

Something similar was also being discussed here: http://www.proz.com/forum/scams/317150-could_this_be_a_scammer_or_a_phisher_web_crawlers_on_visitors_page.html

I guess ProZ's owners may not want to block Baidu from accessing their website, as that would probably hurt traffic, but perhaps they could implement a sele
... See more
Something similar was also being discussed here: http://www.proz.com/forum/scams/317150-could_this_be_a_scammer_or_a_phisher_web_crawlers_on_visitors_page.html

I guess ProZ's owners may not want to block Baidu from accessing their website, as that would probably hurt traffic, but perhaps they could implement a selective filter to disallow the indexing of specific files, such as those related to users' profiles...

P.S. ... in addition to filtering Baidu's crawlers correctly in our Visitors tab...

[Edited at 2017-08-10 14:36 GMT]
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Lincoln Hui
Lincoln Hui  Identity Verified
Hong Kong
Local time: 03:45
Member
Chinese to English
+ ...
What Aug 10, 2017

but perhaps they could implement a selective filter to disallow the indexing of specific files, such as those related to users' profiles...

Kindly enlighten me on why I would want to join a promotional platform that prevents its users from being searched.

[Edited at 2017-08-10 15:20 GMT]


 
Mirko Mainardi
Mirko Mainardi  Identity Verified
Italy
Local time: 20:45
Member
English to Italian
Option Aug 10, 2017

Lincoln Hui wrote:

but perhaps they could implement a selective filter to disallow the indexing of specific files, such as those related to users' profiles...

Kindly enlighten me on why I would want to join a site that prevents its users from being searched.

[Edited at 2017-08-10 15:20 GMT]


Only you can answer that question...

What I was suggesting is simply an option to disallow indexing by specific search engines. That is all.


 
Shouguang Cao
Shouguang Cao  Identity Verified
China
Local time: 03:45
English to Chinese
+ ...
Solution can only come from proz.com Aug 10, 2017

Technically, if you have a webpage, you can add


meta name="Baiduspider" content="nofollow"


to the head of your HTML.

Since you can not edit the HTML of your profile page, there is no way you can do this except request this feature from proz.com

Dallas

[Edited at 2017-08-11 02:38 GMT]

[Edited at 2017-08-11 02:39 GMT]


 
Diana Llorente
Diana Llorente  Identity Verified
Spain
Member (2014)
English to Spanish
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Because the users want to. I do not want to promote my services through this search engine. Aug 11, 2017

Lincoln Hui wrote:

but perhaps they could implement a selective filter to disallow the indexing of specific files, such as those related to users' profiles...

Kindly enlighten me on why I would want to join a promotional platform that prevents its users from being searched.

[Edited at 2017-08-10 15:20 GMT]


Hi Lincoln,

Proz may not want to block all the users from Baidu (or any other search engines), obviously, but the users should be able to choose to do so for their own profiles. It is MY profile and MY information. I would like to be able to choose where I want to publicise my services...

Diana


 
Diana Llorente
Diana Llorente  Identity Verified
Spain
Member (2014)
English to Spanish
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Thank you for the info Aug 11, 2017

Mirko Mainardi wrote:

Something similar was also being discussed here: http://www.proz.com/forum/scams/317150-could_this_be_a_scammer_or_a_phisher_web_crawlers_on_visitors_page.html

I guess ProZ's owners may not want to block Baidu from accessing their website, as that would probably hurt traffic, but perhaps they could implement a selective filter to disallow the indexing of specific files, such as those related to users' profiles...

P.S. ... in addition to filtering Baidu's crawlers correctly in our Visitors tab...

[Edited at 2017-08-10 14:36 GMT]


Hi Mirko,

thank you. It seems that it's not possible, then... I'm filtering the IPs (even though I don't know if that means that I don't see the visits or really that they can't access my profile), but they are quite a few.

Someone coming fom Baidu visited my profile again today 22 times! (plus a few other visitors, also through Baidu mainly). What is really strange is that this has only been happening so frequently for the last 3 months. And I don't have a single customer from China.

Well, I'll keep my eyes opened, I thought at first that maybe someone is using my name and potential "customers" (of my fake self!!) would be checking my profile. But this is hard to find out...And now I got this scam attemp from China too (saying that someone wants to use my webpage name, with a Chinese domain, I didn't reply, but I do not like being targeted).

Thanks! I'd love that Proz let me get out of specific search engines if I wanted to!

Diana

Diana


 
Mirko Mainardi
Mirko Mainardi  Identity Verified
Italy
Local time: 20:45
Member
English to Italian
Same here Aug 11, 2017

Diana Llorente wrote:

Hi Mirko,

thank you. It seems that it's not possible, then... I'm filtering the IPs (even though I don't know if that means that I don't see the visits or really that they can't access my profile), but they are quite a few.


Unfortunately not. AFAIK, that filter only affects the way visitors' data is shown.

Someone coming fom Baidu visited my profile again today 22 times! (plus a few other visitors, also through Baidu mainly). What is really strange is that this has only been happening so frequently for the last 3 months. And I don't have a single customer from China.

Well, I'll keep my eyes opened, I thought at first that maybe someone is using my name and potential "customers" (of my fake self!!) would be checking my profile. But this is hard to find out...And now I got this scam attemp from China too (saying that someone wants to use my webpage name, with a Chinese domain, I didn't reply, but I do not like being targeted).

Thanks! I'd love that Proz let me get out of specific search engines if I wanted to!


Yes, the same has been happening to me (and others, as mentioned in the other thread I linked). The fact you have also been the target of a scam attempt is all the more worrying...

I too would like to have that option, but I fear our profile pages have already been indexed, so I'm not sure that removing our profiles from future indexing would actually make them 'invisible' to those search engines.


 
Mirko Mainardi
Mirko Mainardi  Identity Verified
Italy
Local time: 20:45
Member
English to Italian
Nofollow Aug 11, 2017

Shouguang Cao wrote:

Technically, if you have a webpage, you can add


meta name="Baiduspider" content="nofollow"


to the head of your HTML.

Since you can not edit the HTML of your profile page, there is no way you can do this except request this feature from proz.com


Maybe 'noindex'? Or adding specific user-agents and paths to robots.txt... However, I think I read somewhere that Baidu might not respect those rules while indexing...

At any rate, yes, being able to have some measure of control over that for our own profiles could help, and I think it shouldn't be such a big problem to implement...

[Edited at 2017-08-11 11:40 GMT]


 
Diana Llorente
Diana Llorente  Identity Verified
Spain
Member (2014)
English to Spanish
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Thank you for the info, could be useful for my own webpage Aug 11, 2017

Shouguang Cao wrote:

Technically, if you have a webpage, you can add


meta name="Baiduspider" content="nofollow"


to the head of your HTML.

Since you can not edit the HTML of your profile page, there is no way you can do this except request this feature from proz.com

Dallas

[Edited at 2017-08-11 02:38 GMT]

[Edited at 2017-08-11 02:39 GMT]


Hi Shouguang,

Thank you for the tip. It may be useful in the future for my web, although I still don't have this problem there, but you never know, so thanks!

Yes, Proz should be able to do that for us, I will create a technical request now so that at least they know that I am interested.

Diana


 
Diana Llorente
Diana Llorente  Identity Verified
Spain
Member (2014)
English to Spanish
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
I'll remove the filters, then Aug 11, 2017

Thanks for the info about the filters, Mirko, if they just are there so that I don't see the visits, then they aren't very useful, I'd rather see what's going on.
Thanks everyone,
Diana


 


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Can I stop my profile appearing in certain search engines? Baidu specifically






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