what I've just now done is created a sub-folder under the dbman folder called databases and I've put the db file(s) there and put .htaccess / .passwd there to! (any other solutions?)

Have you also added those directories to you robots.txt file.

Most search engines will check that file for pages and directories they shouldn't index. Although I have in the past had a problem with google not reading the robots.txt file. They told me the would look into the matter and until then I excluded them from using their robot on my sites.

Unoffical DBMan FAQ

http://creativecomputingweb.com/dbman/index.shtml/

Hi, can you tell me what robots.txt is and how to use it? I also would like to know how to exclude engines like you did with google.

Jan Peter

There is information on my Web Magic site under the topic of META TAGS for using a robot.txt file. I'm not sure anymore the exact exclusion statement I used for google. The information is on their site most likely in the FAQ or help section.

Another good resource is:

Search Engine Watch by Danny Sullivan
http://searchenginewatch.com/

What I use to exclude linkwalker with a robots.txt file is:

User-agent: linkwalker
Disallow: /
User-agent: * # directed to all spiders, not just Scooter
.... the list of files or directories to exclude starts here

Hope this gets you started.

Unoffical DBMan FAQ

http://creativecomputingweb.com/dbman/index.shtml/

http://www.searchengineworld.com/.../robots_tutorial.htm