Limited Guest Viewing mod from vb.org

I thought I saw someone write something up about it here but when I went to go search for it, I couldn't find it...

This is the mod I'm talking about:
Limited Guest Viewing -- Improve community registration rates - vBulletin.org Forum

In the thread it says this:

About spiders/bots
This plugin works by setting a cookie to track the number of visits from a particular user. As bots do not tend to accept cookies, they should not be blocked. To further insure there is no spider accessibility issues, there script identifies major bots (google, yahoo, msn, aol) and explicitly lets them through -- you can easily add to this list by editing the plugin code should you so desire, however, unless a bot starts taking cookies this should not be necessary.

So I wanted to try this out to see how it effected my site as a whole, especially since it shouldn't effect any spiders,

So I've recently installed this on my gaming site and noticed these stats:

• 7x increase in registrations
• Avg time on site increased by 1-2 minutes
• Bounce rate decreased by ~3-5%
• My avg page views increased by over 10,000
• Pages per visit increased by ~1-2

I wanted to see if anyone else has used this and what results they've gotten with it. So far I'm impressed but I'm going to keep a close eye on my stats in case something goes bad.

Have you noticed your indexed pages going down, or finding the permission error in your indexed pages ?
I've thought about adding this mod a few times, but never took the jump.

Originally Posted by jbartle

So I've recently installed this on my gaming site and noticed these stats:

• 7x increase in registrations
• Avg time on site increased by 1-2 minutes
• Bounce rate decreased by ~3-5%
• My avg page views increased by over 10,000
• Pages per visit increased by ~1-2

This is only half the picture though.

increased registrations doesn't mean anything. The REAL metric is OF those 7x registrations, how many actually post and become real members? or are they just registering (annoying) to see what they need to see.
100,000 members with 0 posts is the same as 1 guest IMO.

of course time on site will increase... it takes 1-2 min to register.

bounce rate-- if anything i would think this would increase, not decrease.... unless he had his forum COMPLETELY shut down before, and that in itself is word enough for his increased numbers.

same deal with page views. if he was completely locked down before, of COURSE he's going to see an improvement. i know me, if i get a SE result, click it and it makes me reg to see it, i go back to google and hit the next SERP.



If you're open now, stay that way.

I was open before and I'm just trying something new this time. You never know...some of those people may come to your site as a guest, like it but then forget about it the next day. But if you send out emails every month, you just reminded that member about your site and now they are back again.

There's plus and minuses to it but like I mentioned, I'm testing it out to see what it does. If anything, this gives me some more valid emails I can send out to and let them know about new updates/findings with certain games which should excite most of the people that come across my site b/c that's just an extra thing they can now do with a game and it's keeping them in the loop.

Originally Posted by Loco

Have you noticed your indexed pages going down, or finding the permission error in your indexed pages ?
I've thought about adding this mod a few times, but never took the jump.

No, I haven't seen any error in my indexed pages. Like it says in the mod, it's cookie based so most SE's shouldn't notice anything.

Any updates on this would greatly be appreciated!

Thanks
-Flamenco
Flamenco Forum

I am planning on installing it

This plugin works by setting a cookie to track the number of visits from a particular user.

Can you configure it so that visitors get to see 5-10 pages before they start getting prompted to register? If that's the case, I think this could be very interesting.

It should also be search engine compliant, since any page *is* actually guest accessible for the first visit. This reminds me of the favorable treatment some of the subscription newspapers get with Google, when they make the content accessible for crawling and then block it with a subscription notification when a visitor arrives.

If you set the value to 5+ pages before the registration nag appears, it *could* help with conversations without causing too much traffic to bounce away. In order words, those short term visitors still get a couple pages of free viewing before action is required. Most will leave before they see the nag.

For those who express more interest by extended (multiple page) viewing, a registration nag might be better received.

This might be more effective with the quick registration someone posted recently, that allows a more rapid signup completion with reduced info required.

i still think this is a huge mistake to run. cloaking penalties are HARD to get out of. (google 'BMW vs GOOGLE' if you need a backstory on home bmw got dropped from google for cloaking)

this is cloaking?

cloaking is defined as
'guest viewers seeing different content than search engine bots'.

sure, the bot can't accept a cookie, so it always sees it open... but one day when there is a human intervention audit, you're done.

and for what?
the annoyance of your guest users to make them register on a site to read an article/post they happened to google on?

If they like it enough and WANT to contribute, they WILL sign up and contribute. If they see a login/register page instead, they can't even grasp enough of the site to have that WANT and thus, there is no WILL.

If you FORCE them to sign up, there's a 95% chance they will simply hit the back button and hit up SERP #2 instead of registering to see it.


Most people here can vouch for my knowledge. I know what i'm doing (<lawyer>most of the time</lawyer> lol). i HIGHLY disagree with these methods and would NEVER EVER employ them on any site I own, run, work on, or have a remote influence on.




Going back to the case i mentioned...
http://networks.silicon.com/webwatch...9156216,00.htm

BMW set up a nifty flash site. Flash doesn't get indexed at all because the bots can't read it. BMW is aware of this, so what they did was put an entire site in display:none; and other non-visual markups in the background.
Users couldn't see it.
bots couldn't see the flash, just the content in the hidden-to-humans divs (since they don't parse css/js/etc)

they ended up ranking super well, and google got suspicious. They realized bmw was cloaking, so they PULLED the entire domain from their search engine. It took almost a year for them to get back in. I'm pretty sure you don't have the legal power BMW does You might not get back in AT ALL, EVER.

Welcome to coming up with a new .com

I am with Brain, I would never use this mod...

Get registrations on the merit of your content.

what if you have a pay site and want to tease guests or give them a preview?

I agree with Brian that this is certainly cloaking *IF* the cookie checks ever user on the first visit and displays a registration nag.

I don't know how this particular plugin is designed.

However, the following method would *not* be cloaking, although it could be confused for it:

Track incoming users with cookies. After they have visited x pages, require them to register to continue.

The above is not cloaking as long as the registration requirement does not happen immediately.

It's also preferable to have x > 5 (at minimum) and perhaps short-term cookies (expiry in 24 hours?).

With that said, the impact of doing something like that still has to be measured, and there are certainly two risks that need to be identified:

• It could still be flagged as cloaking by Google other others, even if it does not fit the classic criteria.
• It could cause users to bounce from the site, rather than complete the registration.

Originally Posted by dethfire

what if you have a pay site and want to tease guests or give them a preview?

That's what I was referring to regarding the subscription news sites. This is cloaking.

If you have a pay site, you need to create a section of free content if you want it to rank.

Originally Posted by dethfire

what if you have a pay site and want to tease guests or give them a preview?

who in their right mind pays to use a forum now-a-days? No matter what your topic is, there's a free one out there. Why should anyone pay for yours?


it's a bunk business model in the first place.....