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The site has cookie-based autologin for its registered users. Registration is free so they are not too bothered about making it totally secure.
The home page detects whether the browser can accept cookies. If not, the browser (including presumably spiders) is directed to another page with an explanation of cookies on it. If it detects a non-registered user that does accept cookies, it serves up the home page with a request to register. And if it detects a registered user (who continues to accept cookies) then it logs them in automatically.
The site currently has a link on its "no cookies advice" page that goes (effectively) to a sitemap, but Google has not followed this link - presumably because it "smells" some kind of cloaking/redirect.
I have read some of the other posts on this and didn't find a definitive answer.
Also, my question is - how should I best advise the webmaster of the site concerned?
I know they will want to retain the autologin system, and it may be that this is just fundamentally incompatible with being spidered, in which case it is their choice.
However, what if they were to sniff for cookies and serve up a different message on basically the same page - would this count as a redirect? So that instead of being sent to a new page, the "same" page appeared, but with a message saying "you have not enabled cookies, in order to register with us and get the full range of services you will have to enable them and then register, click here for more help" and then basically gave the non-cookie-enabled browser the same level of access to the site as a non-registered user?
All ideas very welcome. What I want to avoid is giving this guy another idea that involves him in a load of work and then still doesn't work...
thanks
H
First of all check that you haven't done anything strange with either robots.txt or the robots meta-tag (it seems a really stupid thing to check but a mis-type could have caused unanticipated problems).
Next grab yourself a browser with *all* cookies disabled and try to follow the same route - I have a suspicion you'll find yourself in an infinite loop of some description (mostly based on first attempts at coding such things myself!)
Also, my question is - how should I best advise the webmaster of the site concerned?
First of all find out what the problem is as otherwise you'll be running around in circles.
If it does relate to the auto-login cookie check then you might want to try skipping that test when the user-agent contains "GoogleBot" thereby giving it access to the content without forcing it to view screens which aren't really designed to be indexed.
- Tony
