users matching 'your real name' ???

dmc · May 12, 2006

How is it that you can use Smugmug's search on my last name, and my smugmug home page gets served up? My "nickname".smugmug.com is not my last name. My "displayed as" is set to David... not my last name. My home page says David's home, on purpose! I don't have any of my pictures keyworded with my last name, it is not in any of the gallery descriptions, or captions.

I did a little research and it appears to me you are allowing people to search my real name stored in the account settings section of the control panel! I would expect this area to be private. I used my real name when I signed up, not expecting you to allow the public to search on it. I am very surprised.

You already know how I feel about smugmug's search and browse feature. Maybe it is just me, but I don't understand why normal people would want to see other people's pictures if there is no relation. I only see bad. Click here to see this old discussion. If I want my hobby photo's critiqued or "made popular" I know where to post them for that... this isn't what I have smugmug for.

I know smugmug users were surveyed and this "did not come up as an issue". But I bet most of your users are not power users, with statcounter, who watch the visitor paths to see where viewers are coming from, and what they are looking at. They have now way of knowing what is going on. (hmm, maybe if I didn't watch it, it wouldn't bother me :scratch )

Note: I have no expectation of privacy on the internet, and I have nothing to hide with my pictures. I don't need Private/passworded galleries, I just don't understand smugmugs emphasis on helping the public find my pictures. Most of the random traffic to my site comes from smugmug's browse and search feature, not google.

I know I always seem to sound cranky, but it is only on this issue, I am really happy with the way I can share my pictures with my family, nice and big, etc.

rainforest1155 · May 12, 2006

Try a google search for:
your_lastname site:yoursite.smugmug.com

Replace both with the appropiate names and google will show you if your lastname is somewhere in a caption or keyword. If that doesn't turn up anything then I'm curious why the smugmug search finds stuff.

Sebastian

dmc · May 12, 2006

rainforest1155 wrote:

Try a google search for:
your_lastname site:yoursite.smugmug.com

Replace both with the appropiate names and google will show you if your lastname is somewhere in a caption or keyword. If that doesn't turn up anything then I'm curious why the smugmug search finds stuff.

Sebastian

I've tried it.... I googled:
<mylastname> smugmug
<mylastname> <mynickname>

my site is not returned.

I also googled:
<mystreetname> <mylastname>
<mystreetname> <mynickname>

still nothing.... Google apparently doesn't have access to the Account Settings data, but Smugmug is serving up my last name (but not my street).

rainforest1155 · May 12, 2006

dmc wrote:

still nothing.... Google apparently doesn't have access to the Account Settings data, but Smugmug is serving up my last name (but not my street).

Okay, then lets see what smugmug has to say about it. Hasn't occured to me, because I've got my full name a couple of times on my page.

Sebastian

peestandingup · May 12, 2006

It sounds like you just want to have your website, but not be searchable in anyway? Is that right??

Well, whether its searching through Smugmug, Google, Yahoo, etc, I dont know what you can do to prevent it. If you have a site, its gonna get hits by search engines of all kinds, not just Smugmug. Just something you have to live with, nomatter what kind of site you have.

rainforest1155 · May 12, 2006

peestandingup wrote:

It sounds like you just want to have your website, but not be searchable in anyway? Is that right??

Well, whether its searching through Smugmug, Google, Yahoo, etc, I dont know what you can do to prevent it. If you have a site, its gonna get hits by search engines of all kinds, not just Smugmug. Just something you have to live with, nomatter what kind of site you have.

I don't think that is David's concern. It's the fact that he hasn't listed his last name on the site at all (there's an option in smugmug which name you want to list: nickname, first name, full name or a combination of those) and still his site show up when searching for his last name in smugmug's search, while it doesn't show up using google.

From my point of view this is a valid issue, because somehow private information seems to be searchable when it shouldn't be.

Sebastian

peestandingup · May 12, 2006

rainforest1155 wrote:

I don't think that is David's concern. It's the fact that he hasn't listed his last name on the site at all (there's an option in smugmug which name you want to list: nickname, first name, full name or a combination of those) and still his site show up when searching for his last name in smugmug's search, while it doesn't show up using google.

From my point of view this is a valid issue, because somehow private information seems to be searchable when it shouldn't be.

Sebastian

Gotcha. Yeah, that is kinda crummy then.

onethumb · May 12, 2006

dmc wrote:

How is it that you can use Smugmug's search on my last name, and my smugmug home page gets served up? My "nickname".smugmug.com is not my last name. My "displayed as" is set to David... not my last name. My home page says David's home, on purpose! I don't have any of my pictures keyworded with my last name, it is not in any of the gallery descriptions, or captions.

I did a little research and it appears to me you are allowing people to search my real name in the account settings within the control panel! I would expect this area to be private. I used my real name when I signed up, not expecting you to allow the public to search on it. I am very surprised.

You already know how I feel about smugmug's search and browse feature. Maybe it is just me, but I don't understand why normal people would want to see other people's pictures if there is no relation. I only see bad. Click here to see this old discussion. If I want my hobby photo's critiqued or "made popular" I know where to post them for that... this isn't what I have smugmug for.

I know smugmug users were surveyed and this "did not come up as an issue". But I bet most of your users are not power users, with statcounter, who watch the visitor paths to see where viewers are coming from, and what they are looking at. They have now way of knowing what is going on. (hmm, maybe if I didn't watch it, it wouldn't bother me )

Note: I have no expectation of privacy on the internet, and I have nothing to hide with my pictures. I don't need Private/passworded galleries, I just don't understand smugmugs emphasis on helping the public find my pictures. Most of the random traffic to my site comes from smugmug's browse and search feature, not google.

I know I always seem to sound cranky, but it is only on this issue, I am really happy with the way I can share my pictures with my family, nice and big, etc.

This is an interesting point & issue, and I'm sure we'll revisit it again periodically as we grow.

SmugMug *used* to only allow searching on the data you've selected for your display type. Back then, your first and last name would not be searchable if you had it set to Nickname - exactly the scenario you describe.

But our customers got pissed. People using the internet are used to using handles / screen names / nicknames / etc as their online identity, but they were telling their friends in real life "hey, just go to smugmug and search for Jane Doe". Of course, since they were "snugglybear" and not "Jane Doe" or "Jane Doe (snugglybear)", we were returning no hits.

We quickly adapted and made it decoupled from what you've chosen as display. This was probably three years ago or so. Maybe less, but more than two.

In that time, yours is the first mention I can remember seeing for having additional controls - most of our customers are thrilled that their name is searchable, but doesn't clutter up their page.

It's an even bigger issue now, since during signup, we don't even let people choose their real name as a display option - 99% of people seem to like having a nickname, so we just default it and the signup process is that much less confusing.

I think the sane thing to do is probably build some controls to allow you to change your search settings independently of your display settings. So you could checkmark first, last, and nick names independently of each other. Does that sound adequate?

The short answer, though, I'm afraid is: Yes, currently people can find you by your last name when it's not displayed, and it's that way by design.

Sorry!

Don

rainforest1155 · May 12, 2006

onethumb wrote:

This is an interesting point & issue, and I'm sure we'll revisit it again periodically as we grow.

SmugMug *used* to only allow searching on the data you've selected for your display type. Back then, your first and last name would not be searchable if you had it set to Nickname - exactly the scenario you describe.

Thanks for clearing this up. There's always someone not happy on how the system works, but I think you made an understandable decision back then. I do like your thoughts about an additional setting to define what userdata is searchable.

Sebastian

DJ-S1 · May 12, 2006

This is why Smugmug is one of the very few online services I pay for. The CEO answers a user question into the open forum with the full history of the issue, why things are the way they are, and what they are considering doing about it. Where else do you get that?

dmc · May 12, 2006

DJ-S1 wrote:

This is why Smugmug is one of the very few online services I pay for. The CEO answers a user question into the open forum with the full history of the issue, why things are the way they are, and what they are considering doing about it. Where else do you get that?

I agree, nice to get a real answer and not a "gee, you put stuff on the internet, what do you expect...."

I kept seeing hits coming from smugmug search with my last name, and I was sure I hadn't put it anywhere on my site... not THAT big of a deal, but it surprised me.

i still want to opt out of search and browse though...(and still have my keywords work)

users matching 'your real name' ???

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