Can vBSEO help me to have private forums spidered?

[eJM]

My forums are for consumers and pros. The pros have asked that their forums be made private -- the visitors can see the forum list, but cannot enter the private forums, only the consumer forums. This would hide a great deal of content. Can the product help me to configure access for spiders and still prevent visitors and members from gaining access.

I realize if, say, Google linked to a private page the visitor with no membership to the usergroup would get an error page. I would have to set up a redirect to apply to that usergroup for access. Right?

What's the lowdown on that? Thanks for the support.

[Keith Cohen]

Hello!

Search engines can only access forums that are visible to guests on your site.

Modifying a site to allow spiders to see content that is different than what guests see could be considered "cloaking" and can get you in trouble with search engines.

Not to mention, if you did modify your site to allow that type of access, your private content would then be visible to anyone who used the search engine and viewed the cached copies they keep on-hand.

[Ace Shattock]

Not to mention, if you did modify your site to allow that type of access, your private content would then be visible to anyone who used the search engine and viewed the cached copies they keep on-hand.

Or, anyone clever enough to make their browser use the Useragent of a spider.

[briansol]

Hello,
I'm done with Jim (eJM) and any information i ever gave him.

sorry if this effects you if you had the same question. This man is no longer worth my space on these forums.

Thank him for this dis-service.

[theChronic]

Hey, do you by chance know the name of that hack / mod?

Thanks!
John

[briansol]

Hello,
I'm done with Jim (eJM) and any information i ever gave him.

sorry if this effects you if you had the same question. This man is no longer worth my space on these forums.

Thank him for this dis-service.

[eJM]

I've decided it's not worth the risk. I have a number of forums that will, I hope, have sufficient content to sustain the spiders. The private forums have been set up so that visitors can see the list of threads, but can't read them. I will encourage members to choose descriptive titles so that we can get a little action from the bots anyway.

Thanks for the replies.