Mod Request: Assign Search Engine to User Group

[treasureman]

Mod Request:

I would like a mod to where I could assign a search engine (gooblebot, etc) to a certain user group, like you can with Invision Power Board.

From my experience with Invision Board, registrations are significantly increased for my forums when I do not allow Guests to read the forums. The more registrations I get the more money I make as my forum is for professionals in the real estate industry and I offer services to them.

However if the Search Engines are restricted to the Guests group your forum will not be spidered if you don't allow Guests to read. Therefore I am requesting this Mod be made to where I could have the ability to assign the Search Engines to whatever user group I wanted.

Note: I have mentioned this feature in this forum and Vbulletin.com before and the idea was met with disapproval by the Vbulletin staff, saying it resulted in "cloaking".

I can only say that I used the feature for over 2 years with Invision and never had a problem, my site was well placed in search engines. It is a non-issue on the Invision forums, a search for "cloaking" over there did not bring up any negatives or problems experienced by having this feature. Surely if someone had a problem with it or got banned from the search engines, someone would have mentioned it.

So I am asking someone to re-think this feature and consider a Mod for it. Like any other Mod a user "uses it at their own risk" and I for one would certainly use it, due to the past success with it.

Thank you for your consideration!

[Andreas]

It IS cloaking!

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=106927
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=102539

There is nothing to replace rich content - except more interesting content.
=> Make you content readable by guests; if it's not worth it, then those forced to register to view it won't stay anyway.