GoogleBot Indexing Drafts

**TopDogger** · 12 September, 2009, 14:30 PM

After upgrading all of my WordPress sites to 2.8.4, I noticed something that I've never seen before. This has occurred several times while writing new posts.

I have Lester Chan's wp-useronline plugin installed so I can see which pages users are currently viewing.

While I am writing a post, I frequently view the preview page to check the format. What I noticed is that while I am writing a new post, GoogleBot is indexing the preview page, even though it has not yet been published. The preview page uses a different URL than the actual post.

I have not seen any of the preview page URLs show up in Google's index, but it appears strange that GoogleBot is finding the preview page while I am working on the draft. At that point, there are no links to the draft anywhere in the site.

I do have the Google toolbar installed, so it could be finding it through that. I also use all-in-one-seo-pack, which does use the correct canonical URL for the finished post.

**bogart** · 12 September, 2009, 15:49 PM

Is the preview page pinging rss directories?

**TopDogger** · 12 September, 2009, 16:16 PM

I thought about that too. I don't see how or why a preview page would be pinging. If it is pinging when you save a draft or view a preview page, it is a bug.

I do not see the preview URLs showing up in the RSS feed.