Conditional redirect based on cookie: can't use 301 can I?

If I use a 301 for a conditional redirect, will my original page be lost?

[zorgo]

Yet one more redirect question but I searched and couldn't find a clear answer.

I have a site that serves multiple countries. Upon selection of a country by the user on the homepage, a cookie is planted with a key for the country. If the user returns, then the homepage is redirected using PHP headers to the specific country page.

Currently the redirect is 302 and I would like to change to 301, but will this affect my homepage? If google sees that I'm using a 301 out my homepage, will it stop indexing the home page?

Is there a more google friendly way to do this?

Thanks as always!

[tedster]

Hello zorgo, and welcome to the forums.

As you describe this, the redirect itself doesn't sound like a problem. That's because the 301 or 302 is dependent on seeing a cookie, and googlebot does not accept cookies -- so Google should not ever see the redirect.

Just be sure that everything is technically sound, and that googlebot can still access the country pages even though it doesn't take cookies -- assuming, that is, that the country pages are not essentially duplicates and you want Google to spider them.

[zorgo]

Thanks! It is so obvious once you point it out!