If a homepage on a website has a content if a user is not logged in and another content when the user login, would a search engine bot be able to crawl the user specific content?
If they are not able to crawl, then I can duplicate the content from another part of the website to make it easily accessible to users who have mentioned their needs at the registration time.
My guess is no, but I would rather make sure before I do something stupid.
You cannot assume that crawler support cookies, but you can identify the crawler and let the crawler be "Logged in" in your site by code. However this will open up for any user to pretend being a crawler to gain the data in the logged in area.
The bot will be able to see all the content in your document. If the content does not exist in the document, then it will not be seen by the bot. If it exists in the document but is hidden from view, the crawler will be able to pick it up.
Even if this could be done it is against the terms for most search engines to show the crawler content that is not the same as what any user will get on entry and can cause your site to be banned from the index.
This is why sites like expertsexchange have to provide the answer if you scroll all the way to the bottom even though they try to make it look like you have to register. (This is only possible if you enter expertsexchange with a google referer btw, for this reason)
