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Hack Wine Spectator with Google Part II

by jatemack on December 22, 2005


It’s back! I know Wine Spectator will get wind of it soon and fix it, but for now, access to Wine Spectators paid content is available.

Click here

Now Click Here

The power of Google’s cache strikes again!
This time instead of using Google News, we use Google’s Cache through search. Here’s how it works.

  1. Go to Wine Spectator’s site.
  2. Click on Articles and Features > Headlines and scroll down to a headline a few days old.
  3. Copy and paste that headline into Google with quotes. (e.g. “A Week in the Rhone: Part 3″)
  4. Click on the Cached link in the top search result
  5. Read!

Here’s a few recent stories:

Note: Looks like there is a two day lag before the stories are viewable on Google’s Cache.

Disclaimer: Again, I am not showing you any illegal hacking here. The problem lies with Wine Spectator and Google, and I am just pointing it out. Hopefully they’ll get it fixed soon.

{ 3 comments }

wineguy December 22, 2005 at 5:11 pm

Very interesting. Thank you for this.

Murray December 23, 2005 at 1:25 pm

This is interesting, why would the google spider gain access to password protected pages? Unless the developer specifically allowed it…

Jathan December 23, 2005 at 2:42 pm

That’s a good point, and I believe therein lies Wine Spectator’s problem. Probably in an effort to increase search term relativity for their site they allow access to these pages.

Step 1: Allow indexing of every story
Step 2: Drive traffic thru to the site via popular wine search terms
Step 3: Block access to the story, except for a teaser at the top
Step 4: Profit from new subscribers dying for the information!!

My guess is they just don’t know there is a loophole.

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