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How do you shield PDF content from web spiders and spammers?

victor92116
Registered: Sep 18 2008
Posts: 3
Answered

Is there anyway to ensure that web spiders won't harvest the email addresses within a PDF posted on my website? The PDF is 120 pages long with 5 pages of contact info and email addresses.

This is my strategy so far:

I posted the PDF on an unlinked web page that uses a no-index tag: . While this probably provides some spammer protection, it unfortunately limits access by the public and by search engines.

My only other idea is to use graphics instead of text in my original document. Thus "jsmith [at] xyz [dot] com" would be a picture and not text.

Thoughts anyone?

plevy
Expert
Registered: Jul 8 2008
Posts: 80
You've hit the main approaches. If you want public information on the internet, this is one of the problems you have to face.

Another thing you can do is make them look less like email addresses. For example, explain the table that you are showing only part of the email address and all addresses should have @foo.com added, or list the addresses as "person at foo.com" and explain that you need to change the "at" to "@".
victor92116
Registered: Sep 18 2008
Posts: 3
Thanks Philip, for the confirmation and for the extra tip!