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Member only forum - can you get content crawled by engines but still restrict access?

by Canuckystan
6 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I'm building my membership site with DAP. Wondering if there is a way to have the content of the member only forum crawled/searched by search engines, have people click on results, but restrict access and advise surfers they have to join to see the rest of the content?

I'm sure I've seen this happen on a site but can't recall which one.
#access #content #crawled #engines #forum #member #restrict
  • Profile picture of the author KirkMcD
    First Click Free - Webmaster Tools Help
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  • Profile picture of the author dv8domainsDotCom
    How to get Google to Access Password Protected Pages


    Google Analytics, yes; the Googlebot that indexes your pages so users can find them when they search Google? No, or at least, not yet. At some point, Google might provide the functionality for you to enter login credentials that its bot will then use to crawl and index your password protected pages. But for now, there is no way to get the Googlebot (which crawls and indexes your pages according to your sitemap file), to access your password protected pages. Still, there is a way to get search engine credit for your pages while still requiring users to enter a password to access your premium content.
    (this is copied/pasted from How to get Google to Access Password Protected Pages | Guru of Search (not affiliated, just giving credit) )

    So, in general, no, not easy.
    Feasibly, there could be ways to allow access based on referrer but this could be challenging (involve modifying .htaccess for starters...) possibly check for any plugins that might handle this for you? I wouldn't know what specifically to suggest beyond that.
    Good luck Canuckystan
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    • Profile picture of the author Canuckystan
      Thanks for the replies. I'll give the old college try and see what happens.

      If I have any success with this I'll post a solution.
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      • Profile picture of the author marciayudkin
        Membergate, which is a popular software package for member sites, appears to enable indexing of member content by making the article and forum post titles to be visible outside of the member section. However, someone finding the content through Google cannot read the actual content, they will get a page asking them to subscribe.

        I was a member of one site where I was startled to see something I had posted in the member section come up in Google. To me, this was an unwelcome thing because I had assumed the member section was restricted only to members.

        Marcia Yudkin
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  • Profile picture of the author Microsys
    If you want to create e.g. a HTML sitemap of password protected pages, then A1SG can probably do it (I say probably because a *few* websites cause problems with the A1SG login mechanism)

    In general: You can try allow all googlebot/bing/etc. IPs access to your content combined with a FirstClick solution. I would do that if I were you... Or maybe make a custom public frontend to your private sections? (Like showing a paragraph or two?)
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    • Profile picture of the author Canuckystan
      Yup good suggestions. I'll try them all and see what works.
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