Can I make indexing bots use the SEO style?

Can I? My forum style is very search engine unfriendly :P
Blizzard Citadel

Hello Arkidas ,

You can download and use vBSEO Style 1.0 from downloads area

When I look at my thread I see that it may be a bit unclear.
I was asking if I could make search engine spiders, at least google, use that style. Why? Because my default style is full of images and I believe that it would help the AdSense and search engine spider to use the vBSEO style. Is that possible?

You would set it up as your default. We don't have any method of using it exclusively for search engines, only as both search engines and guest users.

This can be achieved by combining these two hacks-

Member Bots 1.0 - Allow bots to act as members - vBulletin.org Forum

Force Style for Selected Users or Groups - vBulletin.org Forum

Be adviced that technically it will be cloaking, do so at your own risk

I would be interested in hearing about your results if you choose to take this approach.

This would be one of the "less bad" forms of cloaking if you did it, only because the actual content of the page would remain the same (excepting only the template itself).

Be advised that if detected or reported, it still *could* cause problems for you.

By problems I suppose you mean banned from the Google search engine?
Maybe I should e-mail them and ask if I can do this?

That is a strange task . The following suggestion from Notorious is called cloaking Member Bots 1.0 - Allow bots to act as members - vBulletin.org Forum

However on the other hand what you request may be called different. I cannot recall it as cloaking since both visitors and bots will see the same content. But if this was allowed everyone would prepare a specific style for bot . Thats why i am not sure that this is allowed.

Originally Posted by Arkidas

By problems I suppose you mean banned from the Google search engine?
Maybe I should e-mail them and ask if I can do this?

As Mert suggests, it's a bit of a gray area. I don't *think* it would result in banning. "Problems" might also include just a de-valuation, reduction in ranking, or some related penalty.