Can Google "Read" A Forum Profile That Requires A Login?

[hellonwheels]

I place a lot of backlinks in forum profile pages.
Some of them require me to login to view the profile page.
I read that if I have to login to view, then Google can't
view them either and can't find my backlinks.

Is this true or another myth?

 

[BigBuddy]

Yes, its true, open profiles are better than closed profiles.

 

[chockomonkey]

Pretty sure from what i've read, you need to be pre-qualifying those forums based on no-follow status of links, and whether or not you can access the page without logging in.

 

[SebastianJu]

Some webmasters seem to give google bot an extra entry. So that google can index the posts. Normal users cant read it without logging in. I think they want to get in the serps this way. But normal users can read the content through google cache. I wonder if they keep that in mind.
So there is a chance that google knows your backlink. Depends on the forum.

 

[hellonwheels]

Some webmasters seem to give google bot an extra entry. So that google can index the posts. Normal users cant read it without logging in. I think they want to get in the serps this way. But normal users can read the content through google cache. I wonder if they keep that in mind.
So there is a chance that google knows your backlink. Depends on the forum.

Very interesting! I like your "take" on this.

Otherwise, a whole bunch of really good forum profile backlinks are worthless.
(not to mention my wasted time)

 

[ddungu]

Google always finds those links as long as the forum owner allows for Google to crawl through the site, But am not very comfortable doing such links unless they come from high PR sites...but since they always say that a link is a link....go get it, it doesnt hurt and its not a waste of time!!

 

[newss]

Yeah firefox has addons that allow you to change your user agent to that of googles. I would load up firefox and test the site to see if it allows google to crawl the site.

It will work 99% of the time if google bots are allowed, but sometimes it will not work due to the site actually checking the ip address to make sure its an actual google server. But again that is fairly rare.

 

[hellonwheels]

Yeah firefox has addons that allow you to change your user agent to that of googles. I would load up firefox and test the site to see if it allows google to crawl the site.

It will work 99% of the time if google bots are allowed, but sometimes it will not work due to the site actually checking the ip address to make sure its an actual google server. But again that is fairly rare.

Good info! Thanks.
I didn't know about that.

 

[halfpoint]

It really depends on what the site in question allows.

I'm a member of a few private forums and GoogleBot is always in there crawling so I imagine they do count for something.

I do a lot of profile linking and whilst I do go primarily after sites that allow publicly viewable profiles I do use some that are as you described.

 

[hellonwheels]

Thanks for weighing in Pat.

Anyone else?