Session IDs within interchange, interchange customization

interchange session id spider friendly

[didit]

A client of is running interchange (the open source commerce server), and their webmaster has set it up with session IDs as a default. Of course this makes the site very search engine spider unfriendly.

I assume the product can either be configured to use cookies as the primary session tracking method or altered not to serve session IDs at all.

I would imagine someone has probably done a hack where any request from a SE spider gets non session ID links and pages where all others do (if that programmer really liked session IDs but understood the need for SE friendliness.

Where do I point this client? They probably would hire a consultant to help them patch the code, or appreciate any help in finding the right educationa resource.

[brotherhood of LAN]

I find the best way is to have a button for adding products to cart, and only initiate a session when a product is added, that way you dont have to worry about search engines and sessions as theyre incapable of clicking a form button.

If the script youre running can be edited perhaps try to configure it this way, then only people who are putting things into a cart (and those who NEED to be tracked) are tracked.

[ecommerce man]

Your client needs to upgrade to Interchange version 4.9.3. Some stuff was added that identifies spiders giving then links without session information.

There are lots of other little tricks you can use when optimising an Interchange site for search engines. Actionmaps is one method of getting categorys and stuff into the URL.