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using sessions bad for SEO?

Posted: Wed Dec 07, 2005 1:07 pm
by Burrito
Working on a new SEO campaign I am. To know if using sessions (or even cookies) for each visit will inihibit my rankings I want.

Any light you can shed, I will appreciate.

Posted: Wed Dec 07, 2005 1:47 pm
by Luke
talking like yoda definately will not help in any situation.

Although I love your avatar... first time I saw it I laughed out loud and it's hard to get me to laugh out loud at an image.

Re: using sessions bad for SEO?

Posted: Wed Dec 07, 2005 1:49 pm
by Roja
Burrito wrote:Working on a new SEO campaign I am. To know if using sessions (or even cookies) for each visit will inihibit my rankings I want.

Any light you can shed, I will appreciate.
I'll go out on a limb, and say it can.

However, the devil is in the details. First, whats the implementation? If you are hiding the majority of a site contents behind a (session-based?) login, then clearly, the spider won't see those pages. Also, are you passing sid in the url? Some search engines have issues with pages that do. (very few these days, thankfully)

As a general statement, most of the search engines with most of the visitors handle cookies and sessions just fine, and even understand the SID in the url issue. As long as you make a reasonable effort to make the sessions transparent, you shouldn't take much of an SEO hit at all.

Posted: Wed Dec 07, 2005 3:21 pm
by Burrito
Using sessions simply to track hits / conversions I am. Forcing or using a log-in I am not. Just concerned about crawler / bots not handling sessions (or cookies) I am.

Thankful for the input I am.

Posted: Wed Dec 07, 2005 3:26 pm
by Luke
Burrito wrote:Using sessions simply to track hits / conversions I am. Forcing or using a log-in I am not. Just concerned about crawler / bots not handling sessions (or cookies) I am.

Thankful for the input I am.
AAAAAH!

Posted: Wed Dec 07, 2005 3:37 pm
by Ambush Commander
Well, a lot of sites out there pass cookies automatically and still get indexed. I think the bots just ignore the cookies.

I prefer not sending cookies unless absolutely necessary (like logins).

Posted: Wed Dec 07, 2005 3:39 pm
by Burrito
Primarily using sessions I am. But setting a cookie I also am to track repeat visitors.

Need to do this I do so effectively track PPC campaigns I can.

Posted: Wed Dec 07, 2005 4:01 pm
by Luke
Burrito wrote:Primarily using sessions I am. But setting a cookie I also am to track repeat visitors.

Need to do this I do so effectively track PPC campaigns I can.
NO!!!! NO!!!! NO!!!

Posted: Wed Dec 07, 2005 5:01 pm
by Ambush Commander
If I visited your site, I'd probably kill the cookie. ;)