Thanks, Bill. I don't know any enterprise in which there are perfect guarantees, but what you've said is clear and simple.

Marcia

Marcia - it appears you're referring to something different from what the protection thread is about. If I understand you correctly, you're talking about the listings of the threads (or posts) shown on the entry page of a forum, which can be customized by members in the profile edit page (i.e. the 'Number of Posts to Show Per Page' profile customization field). That field and the number of posts/threads shown on a forum entry page have no relation or importance to any of my posts in this thread on Google protection.

What I'm talking about as needing protection are the pages spun from one single, individual thread. That can't be customized in the profile pages.

And to prevent any further confusion, I've added an illustration below.

http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/images/threads-posts.jpg

You're talking about what's encompassed in the gold circle labelled 1. That is not relevant to the protection code. What I've been describing are what I've enclosed in the green circles, labelled 2. Namely, individual posts that are popular enough to span more than one page (sequenced 1 2 3 etc). The first and the additional pages in such instances are what need the protection code.

I hope there's no more confusion.

Cheers,
...Alex

No, Alex, I am talking about what you've labeled in green. When I set 5 posts per page, this thread has (up to now) 3 pages, but when I set 20 per page, it has 1 page.

I wanted to make it clear to people that what Google sees as a page may not be what a poster sees. I think, though, Bill has answered the question -- he says the system sets ten posts per page, that that is what Google sees as a page, so every tenth must be indexed. I'm glad to bow out of this, so you and Bill can take over.

Thank you,
Marcia

Thanks, Marcia. I think now, we're on the same page. And Bill is right that Google and other bots will use the default setting, which is why I neglected to consider that some members might have changed the default.

Cheers,
...Alex

Alex and Steve,

Thanks for the follow up info. Like i said, I am not too worried about it for myself, but thought it might useful data to share with you, Alex.

Best,

David R.