How did someone find my site, if no inward links?

Once a domain exists it can be found.

Hi Ipstenu,

In the case of the sites I mentioned, they are folders off my main domain, not new domains – if I posted an HTML page on my site with no inward links, I wouldn’t expect it to be found; is it something specific to WordPress that the site identifies its presence elsewhere? There’s a ‘how’ here which is I guess the question ??

Ah, it’s not WordPress, it’s … well the power of a skilled algorithmic program that scans your (and everyone else’s) servers for logical (and often illogical) folder and file names.

The how is ‘Some really freakin’ cool software programing.’ The only way WordPress aided that, was if you did NOT pick ‘block search engines’ from the Privacy options. Cause search engines are insidious.

That makes sense, thanks for the explanation! And I’m heading to those privacy options now…

what is inward links?
i never listen about inward links…

[signature moderated]

I meant that I haven’t linked to the sites from anywhere else (while I am working on them, before making them public), therefore I felt that it would be impossible for anyone to find them unless they knew the specific URL where they are located on my server. Google used to rank pages by how many links (what I’m calling ‘inward links’) there are to a site – the more people linking to your site, the higher the ranking. I also thought that ‘spiders’, ‘robots’, search engines etc wouldn’t be able to find a site if there wasn’t a bit of ‘web’ – a link from somewhere else – to connect to it. But clearly, I am behind the times ??