Hello 
Personally, if I were running a support forum for a specific product or SaaS, I would seriously consider putting the entire forum behind a login requirement at this point.
Here is my logic:
The main SEO and organic traffic should be driven by the product’s official website and documentation anyway. The forum’s primary job is to serve actual customers. By making the forum private:
- You block AI scrapers and search engines from indexing your community’s collective knowledge for free, meaning users must log in and join your space to get those specific answers.
- It creates an exclusive environment where paying customers feel safer sharing screenshots, logs, or specific setups without them being indexed publicly on Google.
Of course, this might increase the load on official support channels for basic questions that could have been resolved via a quick Google search, but as AI keeps stealing forum content to answer questions on third-party interfaces, forcing a login might be the only way to keep your community active and protect your data.
I also experience a huge decrease but I have no product so not the same thing. I try to find a way to fix this. 