John Mueller of Google said it is okay to whitelist specific IP addresses if you do not want GoogleBot to access that content yet. That is not a form of cloaking and not against Google's guidelines.
John Mueller said on Twitter "If you're only allowing a small set of IP addresses (you & your testers), then Googlebot wouldn't be in that set, so you wouldn't need to explicitly also block Googlebot (it would be blocked by default, like everyone else)."
Here is the tweet:
If you're only allowing a small set of IP addresses (you & your testers), then Googlebot wouldn't be in that set, so you wouldn't need to explicitly also block Googlebot (it would be blocked by default, like everyone else).
— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) October 18, 2019
Makes sense...
Forum discussion at Twitter.
Note: This story was pre-written before the Simchat Torah holiday. I am currently offline for the holiday and unable to respond to comments on this site, social, media or other platforms.
