Best way to implement a splash page

Don't want the PR drop from all pages moving down a level

[peterdaly]

I have an inflexible requirement for a splash page on a site I am working on. The splash page requires the user identify their user type from 3 choices. The choice sets a cookie that defines how the "real" homepage content is populated.

90% of users will be choosing "option 1", which is the content crawlers need to primarily see.

I am very concerned about dropping the content from the top level of the site, which is where most of the incoming links point, down by one level in the tree.

I'm trying to figure out how to implement this in a way where the splash page is ignored by crawlers, but that won't be considered cloaking.

Basically the best option I have come up with so far is have the real homepage be the index page ("/"), with a cookie being set by Javascript followed by a javascript redirect to the splash page ("/splash.html") if the cookie is set (signifying a human visitor.) The root page ("/") would be redered as per the user selection on the splash page if the user is coming back from the splash screen with the user type cookie already set.

A client loading the root url ("/") with javascript and/or cookies disabled, or a "dumb" spider will directly see the content that 90% of users will have selected from the splash page.

Thoughts?

Will GoogleBot execute Javascript AND accept cookies?

Could this trigger a penalty?

Am I overly concerned about moving the site content down one level?

Am I justified in my concerns?

The site is a PR6.

[mikedee]

Your plan sounds about right, except rather than redirecting to splash.html you could just include the splash content in a hidden div and then display that with javascript. That way you are showing exactly the same content to everyone, but give people with javascript/css additional options. If its only 10% of visitors then maybe the splash div could just be a small part of the screen rather than full screen.

[londrum]

if your client is inflexible then this is probably no good... but if it's as high as 90% then the best thing to do would be to just send everyone to that page. forget about redirecting them if they haven't set the cookie.

but include an option somewhere on that page where they can go and change their option if they wish to.

a good real world example would be amazon.com. if you're from a UK IP then they know you'd probably prefer the UK site, but they don't send you there automatically - they include a little ad at the top instead which gives you the option if you so wish.

the problem with setting cookies and redirecting is that the customer will have problems changing his mind. what if he clicks on the wrong button? the only way he could change his mind would be to delete the cookie.

[peterdaly]

There will be are "Are you not user type xyz?" type links to reset the cookies and redirect back to the splash page.

I've considered the div overlay option...I thought a hidden text penalty may be the outcome, but don't really know what's OK in that regard.

[mikedee]

If I were google, I would get my toolbar spy monkeys to look out for sites which use javascript to redirect very shortly after clicking on the homepage. I would ask them to flag those sites for manual review.

A div is just a dynamic menu, no problem there ;)