Don’t think it makes sense to do this.  If the webserver is responding at all, then it’s not turned off and it’s not closed.  That being the case, it makes more sense to have a “we’re closed” page that humans see when they visit the page, and ALLOW spidering of the site for others.  After all, google doesn’t index most sites instantaneously (more like every few days, or MAYBE every day for B&H), so it’s almost always guaranteed to be slightly stale for any storefront that’s updated frequently.

I like the way B&H handles this: their site says, “closed for the holiday,” just like any normal store.   What’s wrong with that?

cydney:

Will companies use 503 msg to prevent visitors to sites on days other than Shabbat? This could have all sorts of possibilities for contests, holiday websites, etc. RT @jatinmahindra Stop Spiders From Crawling Your Site http://bit.ly/vr87m