How to get Google to Access Password Protected Pages

Can Google Access Pages That Require a Login?

Google Analytics, yes; the Googlebot that indexes your pages so users can find them when they search Google? No, or at least, not yet. At some point, Google might provide the functionality for you to enter login credentials that its bot will then use to crawl and index your password protected pages. But for now, there is no way to get the Googlebot (which crawls and indexes your pages according to your sitemap file), to access your password protected pages. Still, there is a way to get search engine credit for your pages while still requiring users to enter a password to access your premium content.

Organizing Your Public and Premium Content

The answer to this dilemma is to provide some content for free, and for the rest, require a login. This way, users will find your free articles that are indexed in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages), and if they like them, they are more likely to subscribe to your premium, or password protected, content.

Another approach is to offer a teaser of each article for free, and then instead of providing a read more link to the rest of the article, provide a link to your login-protected page that contains the full article. This way, your free teasers get indexed, users get an idea of what the article is about, and if they want to keep reading, they can pay for the rest of the article.

While this example seems tailored to an article-based site, you can easily apply it to any premium content. Let's say you are operating a racing site, and you have sporting events that require registration. You can offer the description of the event for free, and then link to a registration page that is password protected.

How Does this Apply to Analytics?

Unlike the Googlebot, which needs access to crawl your pages, Analytics works on behalf of your users. That means, once your users login and access a password protected page, the Analytics script will execute and Google will receive the tracking data necessary to track and analyze your visitor's behavior.

Hopefully this article has given you some idea of how you can leverage your free content to gain more search engine traffic while at the same time adding incentive and value to your premium content and increasing your subscriber base.