• Registered: 2006-07-26
  • Posts: 5

Topic: SECURITY - How To Hide From Search Engines?

Hello

I am looking to have some member only areas of my forum - and I would like to be absolutly 100% sure that these areas could not be crawled by any search engines...

How can I protect only certain forums and treads from being indexed by the search engines - while allowing the rest to still be indexed?

Thank-you in advance for your help.

  • Jansson
  • Former PunBB Developer
  • Offline
  • From: Sweden
  • Registered: 2003-01-06
  • Posts: 856

Re: SECURITY - How To Hide From Search Engines?

The search engines are only able to crawl forums available for guests.

  • Registered: 2006-07-26
  • Posts: 5

Re: SECURITY - How To Hide From Search Engines?

Hi Jansson

WOW - thank-you for that quick reply.

Ok so as long as a member has to login in order to view the specific thread then there is ABSOLUTLY NO WAY for the search engine to get at this data correct?

The reason I want to double check is becase we will be posting sensitive information in there.

Thank-you in advance for your reply - please confirm what I have said is correct or not.

  • Smartys
  • Former PunBB Developer
  • Offline
  • Registered: 2004-04-30
  • Posts: 7,844

Re: SECURITY - How To Hide From Search Engines?

Yes.
Search bots are guests like any other. If you need to login to view the information, then the bots won't see it (they don't login)

  • Registered: 2006-07-26
  • Posts: 5

Re: SECURITY - How To Hide From Search Engines?

Excellent - Thank-you both for clarifying this issue for me.  PunBB Rocks!