Would it be fair to assume that for a Log-In page, that I can either leave out the Meta tags or leave the contents blank like this…
<meta name="description" content="" />
<meta name="keywords" content="" />
Presumably this logic would apply to any “internal” page (e.g. Log-In, Create Account, Member Profile, Preferences Page, etc.).
Debbie
so what’s your point?
I never said people should not try to have their pages indexed by search engines.
Common sense says you should have your pages indexed as high as possible 
Search engines can and do index files on https.
On Google’s addUrl page they say
We add and update new sites to our index each time we crawl the web, and we invite you to submit your URL here. We do not add all submitted URLs to our index, and we cannot make any predictions or guarantees about when or if they will appear.
I guess it’s a bit ambiguous because Google don’t actually say you must submit a page for indexing or it will never be found by them.
Anyway, it’s not a big deal. To play it safe, it’s best to just submit the home page for indexing.
I could be totally wrong, so don’t take what I said as Gospel, but I’m pretty sure it’s accurate.
ok, thanks for clearing that up.
I know Google and the web are 2 different things and that when you do a google search you are searching its database and not the www.
I was just under the impression that google bots will eventually find your website even if it doesn’t have any inbound links anywhere on the www or even if you don’t submit it to google for indexing.
I thought that submitting a website to google for indexing only speeded up the process - submitting a website meant that a google bot would visit and evaluate a site within about a week as opposed to taking months to find a website that has not been submitted and has no inbound links.
Looks like my impression was wrong. In any case I usually submit a brand new web site to Google for evaluation and hopefully indexing.
No, I don’t think it would. You really need inbound links if you want search engines to find the site. You can also officially alert Google to the presence of your site by filling out a form, which speeds up the process of Google spidering it.
The web is one thing and Google is another. When you do a Google search, you are not searching the web, you are actually searching Google’s database. That database is a record of every site Google has managed to find out there on the web and make a copy of. But it has to be able to find a site to make a copy of it, and it does that via links.
If you don’t get “indexed” by Googe and no one backlinks to your site, you basically don’t exist on the WWW, ever!
And I know from experience that it can take months before you get indexed and people CAN find you, including spambots!! 
Debbie
Some points…
1.) Google will respect your robots.txt file.
2.) Obviously spambots will do anything to get at your good stuff
3.) A Log-In page would be HTTPS and no respectable Search Engine will index that, and I believe spambots may not be able even if they want…
Debbie
Google’s spiders index pages by following links from page to page across the web. If there are no links to the page, Google won’t find it, nor will any other bots, including spam bots.
ok thanks for that.
I knew search engines follow links to look for pages to potentially index but I thought they somehow also traveled from domain name to domain name looking for potential website home pages (and subsequent sub pages if any) to index.
I am thinking of the scenario where a brand new website is launched with no links to it anywhere else on the www. Even without any other links to it on the www and without submitting the website (via a sitemap.xml) to Google for indexing, I thought that a Google bot would eventually still find the website. Whether any pages on the website are then subsequently indexed by Google is another issue.
Anyway, I’m digressing now 
Google’s spiders index pages by following links from page to page across the web. If there are no links to the page, Google won’t find it, nor will any other bots, including spam bots. Putting a reference in a robots file will alert spam bots to the presence of the page, which you don’t want at all.
Of course, if you have a link on your site to a signup page etc., then yes, the page will be listed in search engines. So I’m really talking about a hidden login page for clients to log in to their CMS, for example.
Even with a login page that is listed in Google, it won’t rank well and is unlikely to be found often in Google.
You can put them in your robots.txt file as “Disallow”…
Debbie
I thought that search engines like Google will find all web pages eventually, assuming they remain on the www long enough, and it’s only a question of whether Google actually indexes them or not based on the page content. 
Agreed.
Thanks,
Debbie
Yeah, no point in trying to help the search engines index a page that you won’t want people to find by searching. I never have any links pointing to the login page anyway, so Google et at. will never see it. You can thus do away with all the usual niceties (meta description and keywords are just for them). It might be worth putting in a meta page title at least (<title>), as the page will look nicer that way when someone is logging in.