Hello,

It is known that Google punishes sites that show content only visible by
the Google Crawler, and invisible for normal visitors.

Imagine a site that needs users to login to view the content, and also
makes the content visible to the Google crawler (without login). Is this
site going to be punished?

After all, the content IS visible, although it's only accessible for
users who are logged in.

Webmasterworld is an example of such a site. They score very high for
some keywords, due to their forum, but it's only accessible if you log in.

(e.g.
http://www.google.be/search?hl=nl&q=...G=Zoeken&meta=)

Does anyone knows if this is allowed by search engines or it's just a
matter of time before such sites are punished?


Thanks

"Steven" <user@example.net> wrote ...
> Imagine a site that needs users to login to view the content, and also
> makes the content visible to the Google crawler (without login). Is this
> site going to be punished?

It's not a matter of being punished; it's the simple truth that Google can
only index page it can read; if you block the spider, then those pages
cannot be indexed.

There are ways of allowing a spider to read password protected pages, then
refer 'clickers' to a login page.

But if you block the spider, your site cannot benefit from it.
--

Andrew
Editor
http://www.seo2seo.com/

Andrew Heenan schreef:
> "Steven" <user@example.net> wrote ...
>> Imagine a site that needs users to login to view the content, and also
>> makes the content visible to the Google crawler (without login). Is this
>> site going to be punished?
>
> It's not a matter of being punished; it's the simple truth that Google can
> only index page it can read; if you block the spider, then those pages
> cannot be indexed.

Yes, correct.

>
> There are ways of allowing a spider to read password protected pages, then
> refer 'clickers' to a login page.

Indeed, and that's what I mean. Is this allowed by Google or not?

On Mon, 27 Nov 2006 10:59:46 GMT, "Andrew Heenan" <andrew3@heenan.net>
wrote:

>"Steven" <user@example.net> wrote ...
>> Imagine a site that needs users to login to view the content, and also
>> makes the content visible to the Google crawler (without login). Is this
>> site going to be punished?
>
>It's not a matter of being punished; it's the simple truth that Google can
>only index page it can read; if you block the spider, then those pages
>cannot be indexed.

Even by information from the Google toolbar? If it's not blocked by
robots.txt too then I'd imagine it'd get indexed. I've not tested
this, mind you. Even if I did, though, there's no guarantee that what
worked to block out a spider one day would work the next.

BB
--

http://www.kruse.co.uk/seo-sitemap.htm
http://www.here-be-posters.co.uk/art-prints-sitemap.htm
http://www.here-be-posters.co.uk/lithographs.htm

"Steven" wrote ...
>> There are ways of allowing a spider to read password protected pages,
>> then refer 'clickers' to a login page.
> Indeed, and that's what I mean. Is this allowed by Google or not?

Depending how it's done, Yes.

Personally, I have doubts about the morality of that, but Google doesn't;
you'll find many large corporations (eg newspapers and journals), do it all
the time. as well as the WMW type-sites.

Alas, I cannot advise on the 'How' - Try WMW; I'm sure I've seen this topic
there!

Good Luck!
--

Andrew
Editor
http://www.seo2seo.com/