I have read studies on a few SEO blogs about this, but can't remember where. Can someone provide me links to studies/posts that show Google indexes files/pages that are not linked to by anything?
It can't, no wait, it won't! unless there may be some cases that might work but I'm not sure.. Like the domain you reged could have backlinks you don't know about (Belonged to someone then expired) Google Toolbar - doubt but can be Alexa - If your domain has type in traffic it can be on alexa and on other listings as well, so and google can/may be follow it If you have a wordpress - then it pings automatically and willl get indexed sooner or later. may be more I don't know about or forgot and I don't have such links, but above are my thoughts
I found on post here: http://googlesearchsucks.com/how-does-google-find-new-pages/. I know I've read about this in more places but cannot find them! How frustrating.
there is no way google will find a page and index it unless there are backlinks or sitemap/URL being submitted to google. sometimes some hosting companies will submit the site to search engines once uploaded and site owners may not even know about it. wordpress blogs are setup to ping pingomatic on every new post which will also get a blog indexed without blog owners knowing baout it or having to do anything. google will have to find the site one way of another