Google Hack ?
While searching around for xml stuff, I came across this in google..
If you click on the second link, it takes you to a page, where you need a username and a password to access the article. Dont have one ? Why worry, when you have google cache. Just click on the “Cache” link, and you are taken to the article without any issues
Can anyone explain this ?
Unless the authentication is a recently added “feature”, I’m stumped!
Thats what I think so too. Maybe google crawled it before the auth system was putup. Or maybe there is a link to the article directly somewhere and we dont know about it 🙂
FWIW, you don’t need login/pass to access NYTimes.com via google news. The URL it links to has a “&PRTNR=GOOGLE” appended to the end, and when you click it, it opens just fine. Maybe byte.com also grokked the google API and specs, and setup their servers appropriately … ?
Most of the CIOL sites fall under this category… I’ve used the google cache to view the information I was looking for on many occassions…
I think these companies turn off authentication for the googlebot/other search engines… because they are the ones that drive traffic to their sites after all!