

If blacking out your website, return status code 503 to avoid an SEO hit - SquareWheel
http://searchengineland.com/blackout-your-site-without-hurting-seo-108302

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SquareWheel
I see it's already hit the front page, but here is another page of advice
directly from a Googler:
[https://plus.google.com/u/0/115984868678744352358/posts/Gas8...](https://plus.google.com/u/0/115984868678744352358/posts/Gas8vjZ5fmB)

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amirmc
The author (pierrefar) also commented in the HN thread of that post about
JavaScript suggestions he'd come across.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3470396>

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jameslevy
If other 50x error codes can result in an SEO, why bother to even use them? is
it frowned upon to use 503s where an actual server error response would
usually be returned?

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jbri
I can't see anything in the linked article suggesting that other 50x responses
will result in poorer search engine performance - I would expect that any of
the transient-fault 50x responses would have the exact same search engine
impact. The important part is _not_ returning 200 OK and having googlebot
index your blackout page.

It just so happens that 503 is the semantically correct response for this
situation, while other 50x responses are not.

~~~
rue
I'd really rather everyone use the correct status codes (503 indeed being the
correct one here) than try figure out what their SEO impact may or may not be.
I'm quite sure Google understands HTTP.

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suneilp
This is good advice.

Even better advice would be to serve different content for regular users. This
is easily done through User Agent sniffing. You can do it at the app level or
web server such as Apache's Rewrite rules.

Is this cloaking? It might be. However, for only a day, there shouldn't be any
harm in it.

~~~
SquareWheel
I'd be cautious of that method. Google is not a fan of cloaking, and you might
wind up with a penalty for much longer than the blackout.

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ck2
Or just use a CSS black curtain.

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cdent
I tweeted this earlier:
<https://twitter.com/#!/anticdent/status/159221189393383424>

'Saying "If blacking out your website, return status code 503 to avoid an SEO
hit" == "Bring the caviar when you come to the protest camp"'

If you're not willing to demonstrate damage to your situation in your protest,
then it doesn't really count as a protest much, does it?

~~~
non123
That's stupid. It's not about taking damage, it's about raising awareness.

~~~
cdent
Try this: <http://maddox.xmission.com/>

