Forum Moderators: open
From here you have to register to use the advanced features of the site. If you try and access one of the member pages directly from the browser you get taken to a log in required screen.
Will google index the members pages by looking at the code or will it be re-directed by the code in the site if you get my meaning? Is there any way around this or is it normal not to want your membership pages spidered?
Many thanks in anticpation
I've always felt requiring membership to a site in order just to look at it is contrary to the open nature of the web, but that's another discussion. :)
some sites use a "tease" method - allow some parts or a summary of a page to be viewed by spiders/non-registered users and then you have to register for more.
I think this is probably the closest you can get to having your cake and eating it!
;-)
A very interesting debate indeed Abates.. It's a dating site so that about wraps the discussion on my part but as you say generally a good topic to banter about :D
Having said that, I don't think there's an easy way to get any PR for private pages so you might be wasting your time. However, if you have some high PR sites, you might be able to work something out.
Kaled.
When you are trying to find information about something, do you really want to have a registration screen pop up when you click through from a search engine?
When I find that sort of thing cluttering up the SERPs, the first thing I do is report it to google. I don't know if they pay any attention to my reports, but those sites don't tend to last long in the SERPs.
I guess it depends on the business model of the site. If registration is not critical (just a method to harvist user details) then the above may be a solution.
I would not be surprised if cloaking were used but I don't see that it is strictly necessary in this instance.
Kaled.
Try this:
Log out and delete your webmasterworld cookie. Go to google and search for "florida google update"
A webmasterworld forum thread is search result #7 and #8.
When you click either link the thread isn't displayed. Instead is the following message:
"status: Either we require login from users from your ISP because of abuse, or the thread is marked members only. Please login and then back up to view."
I doubt my ISP is marked as abusive, because that would be a big chunk of the internet market.
The google bot is indexing these forums while general surfers can't access it directly unless logged in. Even though google doesn't provide a "cache" link for any of these forums, if you go back to the search example I gave you can see that the search results do display some content contained within the page as its link description (i.e. ... Google Update History. In February of this year, WebmasterWorld began naming the
updates under the same naming scheme as the US ... Florida, 2003, Nov, 14, Fri, 6:37am, ...)
I stand corrected. I just connected as Guest and found only three threads in Google News apparently updated today. However, when I logged in there were about a dozen threads updated today.
I guess some threads are cleared for public reading but not others.
Kaled.
