Cookies & Google

Mark Buckingham interviews Matt Cutts

[moopy]

Hi,

I've just read an article where Mark Buckinghan interviews Matt Cutts. Among other things, Matt Cutts claims that websites should use caution when using Cookies.

What exactly should we be aware of when using cookies?

Thanks.

Moopy.

[tedster]

Make sure you don't REQUIRE cookies from the spiders in order to deliver the url. Spiders do not accept cookies, so whenever you require a cookie, you block those pages from being in the index.

That interview is apparently only the print version of .net magazine. Oh, well.

[vincevincevince]

Take care using session management systems such as that built into PHP. If it can't get the browser to accept a cookie it falls back on using a GET parameter. Google do a good job of filtering these out ... but only if you are using the default string.

In general - start a session only when the user does something which truly needs a session. If you want to personalise a page, you can check for a session cookie in the $_COOKIE superglobal, and then start_session() only if it exists - giving the default if it doesn't.