Removing SessionID & 301 redirect

[gkellett]

I am attempting to remove SessionID's from my site urls. For Google, my site has been including "g=1" in our URLs in place of our session IDs. For the most part, our pages are indexed and ranked in Google without g=1. However, If you look at our sites internal backlinks, all of the links include g=1. It’s hard to say what the risk would be of removing g=1 from internal links. I’ve read of cases where all of the internal links of a site were 301 redirected, they say that you can expect a significant drop in traffic which then recovers over time. Our case is different from this since the urls that we are going to be 301 redirecting to are already being indexed and ranked. It’s also possible that we receive a boost in traffic since the urls that don’t have g=1 will now have links pointing to them whereas before they were pointing to the url with g=1.

I guess the main question is……Are our current internal links with the g=1 helping to boost the rankings of urls that don’t have the g=1?

If the answer is yes, then is it possible that changing those internal links could cause a drop in rankings, even with a 301 redirect to the url that doesn’t include g=1?

[trinorthlighting]

Session ID's are usually used in PHP programs and they are necessary in most software cases for eccomerce types of websites. I would consult with your software provider on how to do this and speak to them about the effects of disabling the session id's

[TheMadScientist]

Why are you going to change anything?
If it's not broke, don't fix it.

If there is a good solid reason to make a change, then make the change, otherwise, leave well enough alone and don't just change for the sake of change or 'want to'. IOW If everything is ranking fine right now, and everything works right now, then don't fix it.

The preceding post is also true... The only other option is cookies.

BTW: Welcome to WebmasterWorld!

[johnnie]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld!

If you want to remove session ID's, try this tool: [googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com...] At least you can now tell google which parameters are insignficant.