Indirect PDF being reported as direct

[dmcginnis]

Hello all,
I have a website that contains pdfs linked indirectly ie instead of there being any direct links to a file.pdf every link is via view-doc.asp?file=file.pdf
There is a requirement that the pdf ONLY displays from within the view-doc wrapper (which contains an iframe with src=file.pdf)

Indexing is all working fine, but when someone searches instead of getting:
"view-doc.asp?file=file.pdf" they are getting "file.pdf" which is bypassing our requirement for the view-doc page.

Is there anything I can do to ensure that the only 'hit' is for the view-doc result?

Dermot

[David]

What happens with Google indexes your site, or people E-mail links to each other, or external web sites link to your site? What is going to stop them using direct links to your PDF files? If a direct link is available on your site, then people and engines will find and use it.

Zoom probalby find the direct PDF link becuase you are displaying the PDF in a frame. but Zoom won't be unique in doing this.

So you really need to ensure the you don't have direct links. This could be done, for example, by using URL re-writing, (mod_rewrite if using the Apache web server). So every direct hit on a PDF is redirected back to the wrapping page. You might need to also look at the refering URL during re-writing, or remove the frame to really get this working however.

Zoom also has a URL re-writing feature built into it but it might not be flexible enough to deal with this case. Hard to know without seeing the full URLs.

[dmcginnis]

Thanks for the super fast response.

Your reply has prompted me to have a closer look at the view-doc.asp code.
The actual problem was a direct link to the pdf which would allow a reader to right click and save the pdf. This appeared at the bottom of the frame and I overlooked it.

By (a) noticing this and (b) by using zoomstop and zoomstopfollow to wrap those lines I seem to be getting the results I want.

Google doesn't get to see these pdf as they are behind an .asp login screen and the links to the view-doc are not created unless you are logged in. When I index it I can pass an override.