Really Simple Way To Protect Your Download Pages

by Asher
8 replies
Just by inserting this simple one-liner into your
web page's code will prevent the search engines
from placing your download page into their records:

Code:
<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW">
Place it anywhere within the <head> </head> tags.

I'm no programming guru (nor do I wish to be)
but this will eliminate 80% of freebie seekers
who use the search function site: url

Also, another tip I found out totally by accident
is to use caps when you name your html files.

Some people recommend putting this as your
download page: u9r3hibvkhbsdcbvlkjbfkrv.html
which although is almost impossible to guess, it
might leave an unprofessional feel to customers.

However, for most browsers (at least, to my
knowledge), anything after the .com is case
sensitive.

Meaning... if your download page is:

Code:
http://url.com/DownloadPage.html
and someone types in...

Code:
http://url.com/downloadpage.html
... they will get an error page.

Anything after the .com is case sensitive,
at least I believe so.

Naturally, don't use anything easy to guess
like downloadpage, thankyou, access, members,
download, etc.

Oh yes, don't even use oto1, oto as your
one time offer pages as they could eventually
link to the product download pages.

Of course, there's a ton of other ways to
protect your download pages but in my
opinion, if anyone's starting out and is relatively
new in the I.M./Make Money field, this one
line of code is more than sufficient.

Don't spend all the money buying expensive
software if you don't even have something
to protect in the first place... my $0.02

Hope this has been helpful.

Asher
#download #pages #protect #simply
  • Profile picture of the author Gary King
    as long as the spiders follow the rules... they all do not. ;-)

    Helpful post, just want to make sure no one bets the bank on it, ok?

    One of the other issues is that folks spread around the download link - only way to protect that is by username/password.

    Thanks for sharing!
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  • Profile picture of the author Tim_Carter
    Doesn't work for Alexa search.
    You need to use a robots.txt file.

    Be careful though because anyone can see it. You shold have your download page in a seperate folder and have robots omit that folder. Make sure you have a blank index.html in that folder as well so no one can find your download page.
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  • Profile picture of the author zerofill
    I don't know that I would consider any of this protection... maybe "Best ways to hide your download page"
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    • Profile picture of the author samstephens
      Originally Posted by zerofill View Post

      I don't know that I would consider any of this protection... maybe "Best ways to hide your download page"
      That's probably more accurate!

      The only way to secure your download links and download page is to make each page/link unique to that particular customer, and then have it expire after a certain amount of time and download attempts.

      There is a LOT involved in the security of downloads.

      So while using NOINDEX NO FOLLOW tags can help stop pages from being indexed by search engines that follow these rules, like Zerofill said, it's not actually protection. It's a handy tip to help hide your pages from search engines.

      If you don't yet have the money to invest in software for download protection/customer management, then this is a good tip, but just make sure it doesn't give you a false sense of security.

      Using this method doesn't stop people from passing your download links around.

      So it's fine to do, but just make sure you're aware of the limitations of what you're using.

      cheers
      Sam
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      • Profile picture of the author Johnny Slater
        Not exactly the "only" way to secure downloads, but one of the few good ways.

        Using a protected member area with download links that only work for logged in members is another. Also, putting your download directory above the site root and having a system that allows your page to access the downloads through redirects is another.

        Originally Posted by samstephens View Post

        That's probably more accurate!

        The only way to secure your download links and download page is to make each page/link unique to that particular customer, and then have it expire after a certain amount of time and download attempts.
        cheers
        Sam
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  • Profile picture of the author Asher
    Thanks for all the good pointers.

    Yes, this isn't the perfect solution but I
    really do believe it's good enough 80% of
    the time.

    Because not everyone knows that Alexa
    can be used to do that... (I didn't until
    someone mentioned it).

    And yes, it's not exactly protection
    proof - but then again, for most people
    starting... I think it's good enough until
    they've got enough funds to get a more
    robust protection solution.

    Like yours, Sam.

    With regards to download link being
    passed around, the only way I can think
    of detecting it is to pay attention to the
    bandwidth meter and the URLs they
    access it from.

    And if they upload the entire product
    to sharing sites, I'm not even sure how
    to prevent that because I don't know
    if Google Alerts will catch that or not.

    If it does, it's another way to protect
    products.

    Asher
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  • Profile picture of the author Underground SEO
    thanks for those tips, that one about the no-follow robots code is brilliant, never thought of doing that before, don't know how I overlooked it!
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