Does wordpress somehow automatically announce to search engines

WordPress is configured to automatically ping Ping-o-Matic right outta the box. Go to Options -> Writing in WordPress to disable this. For more info, read this page in the WP Codex.

Google and many other search engines use these services to find blogs to index.

ok, I think I *may* have part of my answer, found this :

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Technorati Tags
Technorati (https://www.technorati.com/) is a “real-time search engine that keeps track of what is going on in the blogosphere a€?? the world of weblogs.” According to the site, “Technorati tracks the number of links, and the perceived relevance of blogs, as well as the real-time nature of blogging. Because Technorati automatically receives notification from weblogs as soon as they are updated, it can track the thousands of updates per hour that occur in the blogosphere, and monitor the communities (who’s linking to whom) underlying these conversations.”

Technorati tags (https://www.technorati.com/tag/) are used to categorize the different topics and information used by blogs. Technorati uses WordPress categories as tags automatically. You can add more tags (https://www.technorati.com/help/tags.html) by adding a rel=”tag” to any link on your site. For example:

WordPress
Codex
There are also several WordPress plugins for maximizing Technorati tags on the Plugins – Technorati list.

Note: In WordPress v1.5.x, Technorati will automatically recognize your category names as tags. For more info, see: WordPress Categories, Technorati Tags and Search Engine Optimisation (https://www.tomrafteryit.net/wordpress-categories-technorati-tags-and-search-engine-optimisation/)

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So, it appears that my wordpress site was automatically notifying this third party as I posted my notes (which was in fact the very first search engine to hit my site).

So, my question is, how the heck do I disable this *feature* because I certainly do NOT want it. Again, I understand how for many this is a great feature, but I’m wanting to us it as a private journal and have no desire for others to see it. I realize by using a public domain name, albeit hidden, it is exposed, however I’m willing to risk someone stumbling upon it by trying different urls, but I don’t want people accidentally going to it via a google search!

See my above post if you didn’t notice it.

Yep, Technorati is one of the services that Ping-o-Matic pings when you ping it (the idea of Ping-o-Matic is that you ping it and it pings a ton of different sites for you).

search google for “how to make a robots.txt file”

put robots.txt in the root directory of your web space

the simple codes you type in that text file can put folders or your domain off-limits to one, any, or all search bots.

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on the question of the automatic ping by default — Someone could be identified by Googlebot to their diary, merely by their first test-post? I guess public bloggers expect ping-by-default, but I might prefer an on/off option when you install or @ the first test post.

on the question of the automatic ping by default — Someone could be identified by Googlebot to their diary, merely by their first test-post? I guess public bloggers expect ping-by-default, but I might prefer an on/off option when you install or @ the first test post.

Well in 99% of situations, pinging is what people want or would if they knew what it was.

For that remaining 1%, this is exactly why you should always configure any software you use before using it. ?? WordPress’ defaults are designed for an optimal experience for the majority of bloggers.

It might be helpful to make this a disabled option that needs to be enabled. Am I way off base here? It certainly seems fishy that I had blog indexers hitting this site within 2 hours of my creating it!!

Yeah, you’re way off base. It’s an important feature of the program.

To prevent any accidental chancing, use robots.txt, as mentioned above. But really, you would want to use .htaccess (or similar method for your webserver) to prevent unauthorized access to the subdomain itself.

I wish I had known about this “feature” before I started posting.

For that remaining 1%, this is exactly why you should always configure any software you use before using it.

I configured as much as I could before test-posting. I didn’t mess with things I didn’t understand.
About a week later several acquaintences asked me why I hadn’t told them about my new jorunal (meant for family and some friends) which they had “stumbled across” on Blogger and Technorati.

Now that links to my personal journal are plastered all over the internet, how do I remove them? (I’m assuming that just turning off the Ping-o-Matic won’t take my old entries from the blogrolls.)

Hi,

firstly, I oh so TOTALLY agree with you on various “preconfigured: enabled” functions of WP. As a default they should be off, exspecially something like pingomatic (and as an info for those thinking that 99% people would want that, NOPE! 100% of users I set blogs up for do NOT want it, and they come from many countries and many backgrounds).

Secondly, if you want to keep your blog (or other parts of your website) private, a robots.txt isn’t helping you really, nor is placing something in a not-announced subdomain.

What you should do is password protect that subdomain you installed your blog on and give the visitors you want to be able to visit it the username and password. And no, I don’t mean the password protection plugin of WP, I mean a standard .htaccess password protection under Apache/UNIX.

Complete info e.g. here:

https://www.javascriptkit.com/howto/htaccess3.shtml

you’ll have to get some links to be indexed in the search engines, but the ping plugin may also help