WordPress.com is an easy way to start blogging. Get a blog, check out our features, read the latest announcements, choose from great themes, or learn about the team behind it.
Need help? Check out our Support site, then
I would like some opinions regarding privacy settings. What would you say are the pros and cons to allowing one's blog to be seen by everyone, including search engines and (gulp!) web crawlers? Thanks for taking the time to tell me your thoughts on this.
The blog I need help with is gospelapprentice.com.
Well the best would be exposer so people can find your blog to read if their interested with the topic.
If you set your blog to deny search engine access then you will get no visitors from search engine referrals.
As other bloggers will not know your blog exists and cannot read the content you will get no backlinks to your posts.
As you will get no backlinks to your posts then your blog cannot achieve any authority in it's niche, and will not be capable of earning a PageRank.
Rather than approaching this the way you have posed the question if you simply tell us what your concerns are we can give you more specific advice.
If you think you can blog anonymously then think again. Even if you do blog under a pseudonym we all leave digital footprints in cyberspace. If you are not aware of that and how to deal with that and having your identity and location exposed are an issue to you then there are links I can provide on that topic.
See here > http://onecoolsitebloggingtips.com/2008/07/17/2008/07/14/how-to-become-a-better-blogger-2-online-privacy/
I appreciate your comments. I happened to notice today that my blog is set so that search engines are blocked. (I suppose that is the default setting?) I can easily see the pros of allowing search engine access, but I am wondering, are there any negatives to it?
Btw, thanks, timethief for the link. I will check it out.
I supplied the negatives. Either you want a real and actual blog that gets search engine attention, draws organic 9unpiad) traffic, gets backlinks from other bloggers to your posts and achieves a PageRank or you don't.
If you don't care about those things then you can keep search engines out and create a private journal.
There are 3 options. See here > http://en.support.wordpress.com/settings/privacy-settings/
I would like to warn you though that if you do choose option 2
I would like to block search engines, but allow normal visitors – If you want all human visitors to be able to read your blog, but want to block web crawlers for search engines, this is the setting for you.
and any of those who do visit your blog choose to backlink to one of your posts their post will be indexed and there will be evidence that your blog exists on the internet.
It would be so much easier to answer you and provide solid specific information if you would simply state what your concerns are.
This topic has been closed to new replies.
teeveebee
