Do private pages get crawled and do they show up in search engine results.

You can read about those option here:
Content Visibility

..If I just simply set the page to ‘Private’, does Google still crawl the page and will it be listed as a search result if someone searches for that exact string of text…?

i think yes, just make sure the meta robot tag in that page use follow atribute, then google will definitely index your page.
<meta name='robots' content='index,follow' />

Ok, well that’s good news so far. Now I just have to find out if Google will show that page as a search result should someone type in the exact text string from one of my private pages…Because if Google does it will be giving the visitor information that I don’t want to be viewable.

Google will have the same access to that page as a visitor, if the content isn’t on the page for a visitor, it won’t be for Google either..

Sounds to me like you want Google to scan the content for keywords, whilst hiding it from Google at the same time so people can’t read the private content…

Can you not see any problem with that logic?

If i’m misunderstanding, please elaborate…

“””Sounds to me like you want Google to scan the content for keywords, whilst hiding it from Google(search results) at the same time so people can’t read the private content.”””……….you got it !!!

Let’s say you had a site about cats. Now let’s say that you just wrote 5 e-books about cats. Would you not want to load up those 500 pages onto your site to give your site more keyword rich content…But you wouldn’t want people to be able to read these pages because they contain the content of your e-books.

It’s just a bit of search engine optimization manipulation…Isn’t that what a private page is for…or maybe a password protected page…?

The only other option I could think of is just publishing the pages as normal but having all the text in white so it would look like a blank page. The only obvious problem being that you could just highlight the page with your mouse as if to copy it, and then you’d be able to read it.

It just seems a waste to have all that possible content going to waste when it could be used to boost search engine rankings if you knew a few little tricks…

I don’t think you can have it both ways Rich, either content is there or it’s not…

Hiding text using color tricks is if i remember correctly considered a black hat seo tactic, you’d do more to hurt your google rank then help it.

I’m sure you could check the user agent to see if the request is coming from the googlebot, and show more content then you would to a real person, but I’m not sure if that would hurt your seo if Google noticed, and user agents are open to being spoofed, so it wouldn’t be foolproof by any means.

“””Sounds to me like you want Google to scan the content for keywords, whilst hiding it from Google(search results) at the same time so people can’t read the private content.”””……….you got it !!!

This is the reason why the Internet sucks. Period. I absolutely detest these kinds of tactics. From a users’s perspective, it should be painfully obvious why this is wrong.

Most of the web is spam and porn so is it really that surprising? ..

I knew someone many years ago who had started to make a living out of link/ad farming, and this was back when dialup had not long been around where i am..

Few years later he was doing the same thing, although much more involvement in the XXX related link/ad farming, and making even more income. In any case the procedure was always the same, and as far as i know, has changed little even now.

The problem as i see it, is that sites are being rated or chosen based on search engine rank (usually google), and that’s never been a reliable way to determine the validity or quality of a website (sure google would have you think otherwise of course), but it’s the most common means to finding what you want, and by all means why would you want to look through 100 pages of results if the first page has what you want …

When you talk about developers and the tactics they use for search positioning, i think it’s important to remember, the good/legit guys, the people that adhere to the (shall we say “preferred”) way of getting their website indexed and found are actually part of a minority, and that’s not very likely to change, no matter how much wishful thinking we might do .. we’ve been in the minority for a long long time already ..

I’ve seen several users post here asking questions for sites that look like they are being used for link/ad farming (it’s quite evident when you’ve seen it before), but then i’m not here to judge them on it, as it’s not really a WordPress issue ..

In reality i don’t believe the web is generally a place of professional conduct, as much as we’d like it to be…

All the same, i do agree with you Daniel… ??

Thanks for all the feedback people. It’s much appreciated.