3 replies to this topic

[sgkent]

We have a website that has a splash page. The splash page was created by the company who hosts our site to allow better search results. The splash page lists in search results as "Cookies Disabled" on Yahoo, Google, Alta Vista etc. I did a search of other sites that list the same way and there are quite a few. Anyone know the cause of this error? This is not a web browser error but rather a web page to search engine problem. Thanks in advance. Steve

[mcanerin]

You can do a search on "coffee" on Google and get that, too (Starbucks).

If you look at the cache on Google you will see your websites error page instead of your main page. What happens is that someone on your web development team has programmed your website in such a way that you cannot enter the site without accepting a cookie. Since spiders don't accept cookies, you get an error page, and that's what shows up in the search engines.

As you can imagine, this is hardly search engine friendly, since it's unlikely your error page is full of keywords. You can ask the dev team to create a "visitor session" for those who don't accept cookies, or to not force people to use cookies, or to provide a splash that has site content but is not dependant on cookies.

If you want to see how common this is, do a search on "Cookies Disabled" on Google and take a look at all the company you are keeping. Good luck!

Ian

Edited by mcanerin, 25 August 2003 - 07:44 PM.

[Jill]

Yes, Ian is correct. This issue was brought up at the SES conference last week, and it was stated that it's certain search engine death to require a cookie. Change them to not be a requirement, and you should be all set.

Don't require session IDs either.

Jill

[sgkent]

Thank you - will follow the advice. Steve