How to prevent Google bot from indexing wap and wap2

[Arantor]

No, it doesn't work *quite* like that. Yes, you can create such a group but the group only *denies* permissions, it does not grant any extras, and I don't think it gives any changes to board access.

[Gwenwyfar]

Ahh, I see. And yes, I just tested, it doesn't affect boards even if you're giving an extra permission. Would be a good addition though.

[Arantor]

Why would it? Adding permissions or access like this is a bad idea since it can earn you penalties like Experts Exchange discovered some time ago.

[Gwenwyfar]

I was talking about boards access more specifically, I can't think of any use for permissions themselves (as in permissions to do something in the forum), actually. I do have sections I want visible for guests, but not for bots for instance, since they'd be basically "spam" on their eyes and wouldn't be useful for anyone making a search. I know many forums that have a similar section or simply people who wouldn't like google indexing some things.

Experts Exchange discovered what? (sorry, I don't even know what is that site )

[Arantor]

Yeah, there are issues around *that* too. Google is very fussy about things you show to guests but not to things that identify themselves as Google.

[Gwenwyfar]

And do they really check for that? What issues would they be? I know it already considers these access denied pages a "soft 404 error" regardless. I guess that's one more thing on the pile of useless things to try with a forum for SEs then...

[Arantor]

They have been known to, yes. Like I said, Experts Exchange ran afoul of this in their scheme to convince people to pay for access but show the results to Google for free.