Hiding Miscellaneous/Chit-Chat forum from guests

Good idea or not? I think it may possibly be beneficial from an SEO aspect, as it keeps unrelated discussions and subjects out of view from the spiders, and therefore keeps the ratio of relevant content higher. I'm not sure if it would make a big enough difference or not, but I'd like to hear your thoughts.

What are your thoughts? If you have thought about this before and considered both options, please share what choice you ended up making and why.

 

Off topic on almost all sites I go to and run is hidden away from non-logged in users...

 

I don't think it would matter. More content = more people get to hear about your site.

 

But the content in off-topic forums have little or nothing to do with your site's focus, so I would think that hiding those forums from non-logged-in users would be best for SEO purposes.

 

Now do you cut off settings like Vbseo for this section?

 

But would any of the discussions in the Off Topic section cause a person to actually decide to join up to participate in the discussion? I know I can get a feel for people in the general chat section that you can't get as quickly in the "topic specific" forums.

To me, I'd think it's a good idea to always leave them open.