Can search engines view protected/private pages?

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  uxmistress · Member · Mar 13, 2011 at 7:52 pm

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  I’m using my personal wp.com site as a prototype for a non-profit I’m working with. The non-profit (a homeowner’s association) will likely need a secure area of the site, so I figured protecting those pages with a password and making them private will be enough. But can Google and other search engines still reach that content? Would it be safe to post phone numbers and email addresses on private pages?

  The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

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  timethief · Member · Mar 13, 2011 at 8:28 pm

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  If you password protect the pages you are blocking them from search engine indexing. Protected – The post is protected with a password you set. Any user that has the password can view a protected post. The weakest link is the users who have the password. If they copy and paste anything out of the password protected page into their own blogs, email, etc. it may indeed end up being indexed.

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  uxmistress · Member · Mar 15, 2011 at 2:20 am

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  thanks, timetheif! That’s just the info I needed.