Tags Pages/Search Allow Search Engines But Not Guests

[AlexWebsites]

I have search disallowed for guests and come to find out that the tags pages are actually just search requests for that keyword. So it generates a url and page results. If you have search disabled for guests in the app settings, google will not be allowed to see these urls and instead see a 404. I recently converted and have 100's of tags. Google webmaster tools showed my about 1000 pages of 404's. So I allowed search for guests so that Google can see these pages for SEO/internal linking and set flood control for 25 sec for guests group. The other solution would be to enable search and then just remove the search box with some custom CSS on specific pages for guests, but again it's more work.

Would be nice to have a separate search engines user group or allow tag pages/search to be generated without enabling search somehow.

[AlexWebsites]

Just an update, I had to remove the flood control because Google webmaster tools is giving tag page errors. I guess the only way is to leave search available to guests. It would be beneficial to have some kind of search page generated without the search box and just the results while having search off for guests. This way you still have the benefits of each tag page but aren't leaving search open.

[Rikki]

Note that guests and search engines can't be treated differently; if you allow Google to access or see something that real visitors cannot, you'll end up penalized (possibly blacklisted!).

[AlexWebsites]

yes that's true so in order to take advantage of tags in full, you have to leave search on. You cant use flood control either because google gets blocked on crawls. So its either leave search wide open or shut it down and when you shut it down the tag links that google follows do not show results.

So its an issue with the way it works as default for SEO. The workaround is to leave search wide open to guests (no flood control) and remove the search box with some custom css for guests.