Splash page issue

How can the Google spider get beyond a Java splash page?

[Musicroom]

When a user attempts to access our website, an application checks whether they have the SMD country cookie set to one of 3 possible regional values (soon to become hundreds of possible values as we are switching to real countries). If they do not, the application redirects them to a splash page with a drop down form. Currently Javascript sumbits this form and passes the cookie value to the browser. The user is redirected to the desired page, or if none was specified, to the home page.

The question is, how do we ensure that spiders can get into our site and crawl individual pages there?

[edited by: vitaplease at 11:36 am (utc) on July 21, 2004]
[edit reason] no specifics please [/edit]

[mcavill]

I'd either put a standard link to the home page, or put up a site map and standard link to it on the page the spider sees (Making sure the pages can be spidered without cookies, and there's no chance I might serve the spider duplicate content).

[karmov]

The only way to make sure a spider can move on from a page is to give it a link to follow. Mcavill's suggestion of a sitemap link on the splash page is a good one. But another kind of link could work for you as well.

[valeyard]

You're asking the wrong question. Try asking:

"How can a user with Javascript and/or cookies disabled get past the first page?"

If the answer is "they can't" then - IMO - your site is broken.

[hutcheson]

Remember that in the wake of the accelerating pace of browser insecurity features, the Department of Homeland Security and other organizations are strongly recommending that EVERYONE either get off of MSIE altogether, or turn off Javascript. So you'll be getting no visitors except the recklessly insanely foolhardy Infernal Exploders, and a few real browser users. (So how would that be different, you ask? Um...)

[Musicroom]

Thanks for these comments, they've been very helpful.