Does anyone know? Spiders?

[UncoderMom]

There is a mod here that lets spiders on your board as registered users so they can crawl your forums that guests cant.

On the mod thread some people say its a google TOS violation..

I really would like to use this but not if im gonna get in trouble. LOL I really dont even care if they cache it. I just dont want it my board open to normal traffic unless they are registered. So what if they are smart enough to click the cache link. haha

Is this mod really TOS violation? :eek:

[calorie]

What you refer to is called cloaking. Read what Google thinks about cloaking at http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66355

[UncoderMom]

I've read that but people say that that doesnt count as cloaking and others say it does.

Im trying to figure out if some genius here can say FOR sure that it si/isnt cloaking.

Im to say you do believe it is cloaking?

My next step is to contact google.. for clarity but I dont want to draw any unnecessary attention to myself. ROFL.

[Lynne]

Well, I don't know who you consider a genius, but Marco also voiced the same thing as calorie here today: https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=168845

[UncoderMom]

Yeah, definitely a respectable opinion there Lynne LOL As was calories, just wasnt sure if she was posting a link your stating her opinion ;)

If its so cut and dry I dont know why it would be a debate on that mod thread.

Thanks Lynne!

[calorie]

When a spider visits your site, it sees the same content that a guest would see. If you show the spider something different than a guest would see, then what you are doing is considered cloaking, and it might get your site banned from search engines. That said, some sites have a legitimate reason to cloak, for example, geo-targeting. However, if you show guests a no permission page, but show spiders the actual content, those two pages are certainly different enough to IMO land you in the ban zone.

[cheat-master30]

Correct, cloaking is not a good thing, regardless of what some sites do. Heck, a good example was Webmaster World, but they got mentioned on an official Google blog and online as possibly get banned from Google or punished because of cloaking. See here:

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/a-quick-word-about-cloaking/

[UncoderMom]

What a great link Cheat! Thanks. It looks to me like they need reform LOL

I like the one users post about... how can the NY times do it? You know they show.. a snip of a part of it but then you have to register to see the rest.. When the cache shows the full text...

:erm:

[cheat-master30]

Easy, they just don't obey the terms of Google. If you were picky enough, you could report them for abuse to Google.

[UncoderMom]

Or if I just do it and they try and ban me for it I can demand that they cut NY times off too, or I'll sue .....???

Think that will work? LOL

note sarcasm.

[Marco van Herwaarden]

If you think google will close their eyes on TOS violations by big companies, then have a look at what happened to BMW in 2006: http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2006-02-04-n60.html

[UncoderMom]

Thanks Marco.

I will most likely just try and open more of my forums. Part of my sites charm is its privacy though.

Can I let just adsense bots in? So I can improve the content reach?

[Marco van Herwaarden]

Don't ask me, ask Google etc... ;)