Cookies and Cache on Google

metatags and cache lost

[ammonet]

We have a site which is generated from a database, has URL rewrite, and has pages in four languages. It uses a cookie to remember what language you prefer. One result of this is that .com/index.htm can be in any of four languages. Same applies to many other pages.

Observation: our pages are rapidly being reduced to URL only - no metatags and no cache. Google says: A site that's listed by its URL and appears without a cached copy and a detailed title is partially indexed. When a site is partially indexed, it's because our robots were unable to completely review its content during a recent crawl.

Could this cookie be messing up their cache and or ability to read the page? Or is there some other well-known explanation?

[tedster]

How are you treating Googlebot, which does not take cookies? If a cookie is required before any page can be returned at all, then all Google knows is that the url exists -- and that sounds exactly like what you have described. I would make sure that one version of the page is returned even when no cookie is set.

Even more, I would strongly suggest a different url for each language version. That way you could conceivably rank for keywords in various languages.