Question on Session ID

Session IDs and Google

[Jenn77]

Greetings, I have a question regarding Google and Session ID's.

We have some asp pages that are not being spidered by Google and are trying to determine the cause.

The pages in question do not use any? in the query string, however they do use Id's. For example

www.example.com/productid.1234

there are no session variables passed in the url, however, when using the server header check the session id is passed in a cookie: ie:

Set-Cookie: ASPSESSIONIDAACCSSSA=BEPJLEWHDDKCJDIPMEJJGHLDB; path=/

Do we need to disable session variables totally in order for google to spider the pages, or is this a non issue since the session id's are not passed in the actual url itself?

Thanks in advance for any help or insight you all can provide.

[edited by: ciml at 6:54 pm (utc) on Nov. 5, 2003]
[edit reason] Fixed URL [/edit]

[dougmcc1]

the session id is passed in a cookie

Googlebot doesn't have cookies turned on :)

Also, you're using invalid file extensions. Could you name your pages to 1234.html?

[Jenn77]

Hi, thanks for the response. So the sessions in cookies shouldn't effect Google then, I guess. Re: the page extensions, I think someone from the board edited my post or I typed the extension in wrong, we are using the correct extensions so that shouldn't be an issue. Thanks so much for mentioning it...if we were using the wrong extensions that would be a reason to worry....Guess I'll have to keep searching to see if I can come up with a reason for the problem.

[dougmcc1]

So the sessions in cookies shouldn't effect Google then

No, probably not. Although I'm not too familiar with ASP, cookies, or session ID's. But I would think that if you're site works on a normal browser without cookies enabled then this shouldn't be the problem.

Are there any other factors that could be the case? If you sticky me the URL I'll take a look.

[WebmasterFisherman]

What about php session ids - not in cookies but passed in the url.

If I get this right they don't transfer PR as google views
www.example.com/examplepage?PHPSESSID=f53c315ab3fa4c1d7c81dc7
and www.example.com/examplepage?PHPSESSID=f53c315ab3fa4c1d7c81dc8
as 2 different pages.

Can this possibly depend on PR of the page where this link is going from?

Can it possibly be this way that sessid's of the same sort can be deemed "eatable" on pages with higher PR and ignored on lower PR pages?

WF