navigation
a webmaster learning community
     Home    Register     Search      Help      Login    
Sponsors

Shopping Cart Software
Ecommerce software integrated into Frontpage, Dreamweaver and Golive templates. No monthly fees and available in ASP and PHP versions.

Website Templates
We also have a wide selection of Dreamweaver, Expression Web and Frontpage templates as well as webmaster tools and CSS layouts.

Frontpage website templates
Creative Website Templates for FrontPage, Dreamweaver, Flash, SwishMax

Search Forums
 

Advanced search
Recent Posts

 Todays Posts
 Most Active posts
 Posts since last visit
 My Recent Posts
 Mark posts read

 

Indexing Password Protected Pages

 
View related threads: (in this forum | in all forums)

Logged in as: Guest
Users viewing this topic: none
Printable Version 

All Forums >> Web Development >> Search Engine Optimization and Web Business >> Indexing Password Protected Pages
Page: [1]
 
futurewebboss

 

Posts: 44
Joined: 6/9/2007
Status: offline

 
Indexing Password Protected Pages - 7/22/2007 10:37:21   
In general, will a search engine robot index password protected pages?
I have quite a number of pages that require username and password and need to know if these will be indexable by the bots.
Thanks,
Nicole

 

Posts: 2845
Joined: 9/15/2004
From: Nambucca / Kempsey, Australia
Status: offline

 
RE: Indexing Password Protected Pages - 7/22/2007 16:32:59   
Hi Daniel,

I'm not sure but I do have a friend who found her private contact details through a search engine on a supposedly password protected page.

Why don't you include a robots.txt file or a <meta name="robots" content="index,follow" /> to your head information?

_____________________________

:)

(in reply to futurewebboss)
futurewebboss

 

Posts: 44
Joined: 6/9/2007
Status: offline

 
RE: Indexing Password Protected Pages - 7/22/2007 19:19:27   
Thanks Nicole,

I certainly thought about that, but still wasn't sure if the robots.txt file would proive access since there is an include file in each of the password protected pages. The problem is that there isn't any manner to verify the robots file to determine if it is actually seeing the password protected pages.

Dan

(in reply to Nicole)
ou812

 

Posts: 1601
Joined: 1/5/2002
From: San Diego
Status: offline

 
RE: Indexing Password Protected Pages - 7/22/2007 23:18:55   
Non of my password protected pages have made it to any search engines on any of the sites I've done (that I've been able to see). I would think that if they do, the protection isn't really working. If the search engines can get to it, then I would think anyone could, and it wasn't protected after all.

_____________________________

-brian

EnterpriseDB: Enterprise-class relational database management system
PostgreSQL: The world's most advanced open source database

(in reply to futurewebboss)
Mojo

 

Posts: 2441
From: Chicago
Status: offline

 
RE: Indexing Password Protected Pages - 7/23/2007 0:57:17   
quote:

If the search engines can get to it, then I would think anyone could, and it wasn't protected after all.


Correct.

The search bots just follow links and read the output. If they run into a password protected page, they will index the message on that page. I find cached password forms on Google all the time.


_____________________________

Split Testing
Order Fulfillment
Emergency Kits

(in reply to ou812)
Mehdi

 

Posts: 32
Joined: 8/1/2007
Status: offline

 
RE: Indexing Password Protected Pages - 8/2/2007 9:38:11   
If you don't want the pages indexing add a dissalow tag in your robots.txt file e.g.

Disallow: /privatefolder/

(in reply to futurewebboss)
futurewebboss

 

Posts: 44
Joined: 6/9/2007
Status: offline

 
RE: Indexing Password Protected Pages - 8/2/2007 9:41:59   
Thanks for all the great replies. This is absolutley the best community on the net.
I know exactly what I"m going to do now.

(in reply to Mehdi)
Mehdi

 

Posts: 32
Joined: 8/1/2007
Status: offline

 
RE: Indexing Password Protected Pages - 8/7/2007 22:20:00   

quote:

ORIGINAL: Mojo

quote:

If the search engines can get to it, then I would think anyone could, and it wasn't protected after all.


Correct.

The search bots just follow links and read the output. If they run into a password protected page, they will index the message on that page. I find cached password forms on Google all the time.



Is this still the case for files and folders disallowed in a robots.txt file?

(in reply to Mojo)
Page:   [1]

All Forums >> Web Development >> Search Engine Optimization and Web Business >> Indexing Password Protected Pages
Page: [1]
Jump to: 1





New Messages No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages Locked w/o New Messages
 Post New Thread
 Reply to Message
 Post New Poll
 Submit Vote
 Delete My Own Post
 Delete My Own Thread
 Rate Posts