21 Comments

Disguise Your Browser as a Google Bot and Get Free Access to Pay Sites

July 9, 2007 by in Howto with 21 Comments

Did you know that most registration sites give Google VIP access to their restricted content? Reason being, these sites want their content indexed in Googles vast search database to attract and receive more hits. Why should Google be the only one to get this VIP treatment? Here is how, using your existing browser, that you can receive similar treatment.

First you have to trick the website that you are visiting that you are actually a Google bot. To do that you need to modify your browsers ‘User Agent.’ If you use FireFox download User Agent Switcher (UAS) to start the process.

Then you need to alter the UAS settings (Tools – User Agent Switcher – Options – Options – User Agents – Add) to the following:

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Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html)

Simple as that! Now you should be able to access forums and news sites that previously required registrations.


  • Brian D.

    Did you just make porn even easier to access?

  • Brian C.

    Excellent. But now what restricted site can I access now??? I tried Oink, but it’s not working there. Any recommendation??

  • Brian B.

    I was thinking the same thing!

  • james

    oink does definately not want to be indexed by google lol

  • http://demp.se/y Adam Dempsey

    Just tried it for http://www.experts-exchange.com and it worked great :)

  • chad

    also works for http://pro.imdb.com/

  • http://musicpowerpodcast.blogspot.com/ bulgaria_mitko

    Chad how do u access imdb pro? when i try it takes me to https://secure.imdb.com/signup/v4/signup !?

  • http://web.mac.com/barra_240t Nigel

    thats good, but what sites can we take advantage of with this?

    Can we troll forums without username and passwords? Not that we will, ou know, cause thats like bad…?

  • http://del.icio.us/breakaway11 breakaway

    I couldnt get into experts-exchange…how’d you do it?

  • Zms

    Are you using an OSX skin/theme? Your ‘OK’ and ‘Cancel’ buttons look sweet! Please spill the details!

  • james

    replace pay by ‘require registration but not payment’

  • chad

    I retract my pro.imdb statement… I thought it worked because of content being changed when you switched the user agent, but it doesn’t, I think it just assumes you have no JS or CSS so it displays a spoof image.

    my bad guys :(

  • wrufuss3

    Sounds great; although, I could not get it to access anything. More support is needed.

  • Chris

    hot about a list of sites this works with or atleast a few… i mean besides expertexchange

  • http://none Jae Killigan

    Has anyone found this to work on any site other than expert-exchange? It doesn’t seem to do much for me on the sites I’ve tried it.

    The concept is interesting. Maybe I’m not creative enough to find the sites for which it works.

  • MiMiN

    Can u please clarify on how to use other websites???

  • Johnny

    Try this with Firefox…not sure if it will get you into anything other than expert-exchange…I haven’t tried:

    Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)

  • Arend

    I get this if i try to visit my own website :)

    Error 403

    We’re sorry, but we could not fulfill your request for / on this server.
    An invalid request was received. You claimed to be a major search engine, but you do not appear to actually be a major search engine.
    Your technical support key is:

  • josh

    thanks!!

  • Shital

    how did you get this worked. I can’t

  • http://uneasysilence.com Uneasy

    Download http://tools.seobook.com/seo-toolbar/ it has an option to change user agents

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