Should i prohibit google crawling my members list?

[gmaister22]

Hey guys, i have an IPB forum...i am wondering if i should prohibit google crawling my members URLs etc

What ya think?

gmaister22 Reviewed by gmaister22 on 18th Oct 2011. Should i prohibit google crawling my members list? Hey guys, i have an IPB forum...i am wondering if i should prohibit google crawling my members URLs etc :) What ya think? Rating: 5

[Apathetic]

If you're member's names are very confidential (bill gates, barack obama,lady gaga,bruno mars), then you might consider "disallowing" them

[gmaister22]

lol

[bxflow]

I think if you have like 40,000 members then yes disallow it, Why make googlebot waste its time crawling your members-list when it should be crawling content. I could be wrong so I'll let someone who knows this comment on it

[upnorth]

Check here:

Members Profiles
Nearly all sites have users online at the bottom of the site or a list of members who?ve visited in the last 24 hours. There can be hundreds in this list. As outlined earlier links in the footer have a lot of weight as they could be navigation. If you have your members profiles closed to guests as nearly all sites do you could have hundreds of dead links in a row all leading to a login page. No forum has a rel=?no follow? for members names so all links are followed. If you had to follow a few hundred links in a row and they were all dead you?d be pretty pissed.
It?s not just in the footer. Member?s names are in every post, index, forum, who?s online page, members list etc. That means that there are thousands of links that Google follows which it considers dead.
If you search as I do often an uploader or a member in Google you?ll nearly always be presented with Freshwap.net or WarezLobby.org as these are some of the only sites that have their Member Profiles open to guests and as a result get loads of traffic.

Its a bit old tutorial by now but I belive its still very relevant.


/UpNorth