Google is indexing members profile pictures and backgrounds

[Himadri Goswami]

Please help. When I look for images indexed by google for my site, I find lots of members profile images and profile backgrounds on google image search.  A Lot of members will be unhappy about that. How to prevent indexing profile images and background pics. Please help.

[opentype]

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35308?hl=en

[Himadri Goswami]

How do I filter out only profile images and background images. They dont have specific name. Even to be more complex we have different size of avatars that are getting complex

[opentype]

You have to place the images in it’s own storage location first. You can set that in the ACP:
System → Files → Storage Location. 

Not really sure if it’s worth it though. Either your site or specific sections (like forums, profile pages and so on) are public or not. And you have the permission settings to control that. But when you set it to public, it’s public. If you need more privacy protection for your user, I don’t think blocking specific images from search engine indexing will get you very far. 

[Himadri Goswami]

On 3/20/2016 at 6:07 PM, opentype said:

You have to place the images in it’s own storage location first. You can set that in the ACP:
System → Files → Storage Location. 

Not really sure if it’s worth it though. Either your site or specific sections (like forums, profile pages and so on) are public or not. And you have the permission settings to control that. But when you set it to public, it’s public. If you need more privacy protection for your user, I don’t think blocking specific images from search engine indexing will get you very far. 

Ok, I tried this.  It works fine absolutely fine when used local file system.  I created a new file location for profiles, and they go there with an url   /uploads/profiles.  Problem comes when I am using this with amazon s3 and cloudfront, the files doesnot move to mybucket/profiles. Instead it goes to a common folder with other images. Then, I tried defining a new s3 upload location for profiles by creating a subfolder within the existing s3 bucket as mybucket/profiles. Now the images moved to desired folder. But my profile images were all broken. Upon inspecting the link to images, I found that it still points to the old url, where images are not there . 

So, my profile pictures are now at mybucket/profiles and correct cdn link should be cdn.domain.com/profiles/monthlyxxxx/image.jpg 

The above link loads the profile image when checked in a new browser.

But my profiles are still pointed to cdn.domian.com/monthlyxxxx/images.jpg, where images are no more. And this leads to broken image.

 

Finally couldn't  achieve this and got back to the local file system. 

[Himadri Goswami]

@Lindy   any help?

[Christophe]

The problem is that if the member profile is public then you can do little about it besides making the profiles not visible to guests