user_agent "cloaking"

[lar]

It seems to me that Google is now recognizing, if not down right promoting certain forms of "maybe cloaking". Take a look at their help page at: http://www.google.com/support/news_pub/bin/answer.py?answer=40543&topic=11707

In everyone's opinion, are practices described on this page (including disabling login-requiring headers for certain user agents so that the search engines can get into password protected content) still ill-advised?

Thanks in advance for your input.

Lar

[Marcia]

That's specifically set up for certain types of sites for Google News (and they'll know which is which), so in any other cases I'd say it's ill-advised to even think about it, without also thinking seriously about the risks.

[lar]

Marcia, thank you very much...and you bring up a point I should have thought to, myself. I actually am approaching SEO from a "news website" standpoint.

Much of our content is password protected, and I wonder if this is a viable option - though understanding that its also very hackable for standard browser users.

So assuming I want (and have appropriate content for) showing up BOTH in google news AND in google search engine....