Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
Our site has a great deal of content that we require users to login before viewing. There is no charge for the content, the registration to use our site is completely free.
Previously, to prevent Googlebot from hitting a 'brick wall' at the Login page, we did a User Agent check to require MSIE and Mozilla users only to login before being sent to the content. Therefore, other visitors (like bots) are allowed straight to the content.
Two concerns:
1. The fact that we return different pages may be seen as a 'black hat' technique. We have no intention of falsely inflating our ranking, we just wish to allow the Google bot access to index the same page that visitors will view once logged-in.
2. This approach would be invalidated by the Mozilla based Googlebot. We could use other methods to identify the spiders, but would worry that it could be considered 'cloaking'.
So, can we make sure that Google is able to index content without being blocked by the login screen (while avoiding any techniques that Google may consider dishonest)?
Thanks in advance.
Welcome to WebmasterWorld! I wish I knew the answer to your questions, but I'm sure someone can help you out.
I still haven't found a decent solution to my problem, so here's hoping for a flash of inspiration!
Does anyone have any thoughts on whether there might be a way to coax the new Google bot through a sign-up screen to the main content?
