Simple Machines Community Forum

SMF Support => SMF 2.1.x Support => Topic started by: cuongvttt on December 27, 2023, 09:02:16 PM

Title: Allow guests to browse the forum
Post by: cuongvttt on December 27, 2023, 09:02:16 PM
Hello guys,

When I disable this feature "Allow guests to browse the forum", I wonder if Google Bot can index topics on my forum?

Thank you so much.
Title: Re: Allow guests to browse the forum
Post by: Sir Osis of Liver on December 27, 2023, 09:07:50 PM
Google can only see what guests can see.
Title: Re: Allow guests to browse the forum
Post by: cuongvttt on December 27, 2023, 09:09:35 PM
Thank you so much for the information and have a good day, bro.
Title: Re: Allow guests to browse the forum
Post by: cuongvttt on December 27, 2023, 09:15:32 PM
Is there anyway to allow Google Bots as an exception?
Title: Re: Allow guests to browse the forum
Post by: Arantor on December 27, 2023, 09:19:06 PM
Quote from: cuongvttt on December 27, 2023, 09:15:32 PMIs there anyway to allow Google Bots as an exception?

No, and Google really doesn't like it if you show them content that you don't show to regular guests. It's very regularly a huge penalty as some other forums discovered like Experts Exchange.
Title: Re: Allow guests to browse the forum
Post by: cuongvttt on December 27, 2023, 09:33:12 PM
Thanks, Arantor. Is there anyway to limit number of topics that guests can view? This is a great feature of Quora.
Title: Re: Allow guests to browse the forum
Post by: Arantor on December 27, 2023, 09:36:47 PM
Which will also limit the ability of Google to index your forum which will make it harder to get search traffic. (And no, again, giving Google a magic pass doesn't help here either.)
Title: Re: Allow guests to browse the forum
Post by: Kindred on December 27, 2023, 09:50:25 PM
As said,  no... and doing that defeats the very core purpose of a forum
Title: Re: Allow guests to browse the forum
Post by: Sir Osis of Liver on December 27, 2023, 09:54:14 PM
There were several 2.0 mods that allowed admins to restrict guest access to topics -

https://custom.simplemachines.org/index.php?action=mods;search=guest+topics

None have been updated to 2.1, but they're fairly simple and may work in 2.1.  I would guess they've not been updated because they're generally considered to be a bad idea, for reasons posted above.