Session ID URLs no longer a problem...

If SEs make a tweak.

[sun818]

Why not have the crawler remove the session ID parameter from the URL during its crawl of your site? Give us a new META tag we can put into our HTML. For example, osCommerce can insert the following META tag to have the crawler remove the osCsid parameter:

<META NAME="removeparameter" CONTENT="osCsid">

Thoughts?

[mcavic]

Why are session id parameters even needed? Why not just use cookies?

I don't think most people would use a new meta tag unless there was some benefit for them. But SE's can filter out common parameters.

[sun818]

Search engine crawlers do not read/use cookies.

[mcavic]

That's what I mean. If everyone used cookies for sessions, then it wouldn't be a problem.

(Actually, I noticed one SE that was reading and using cookies. I don't remember which now.)

[sun818]

I know some eCommerce site will still use Session IDs even though a Cookie is used. If you've ever been to an Everest eCommerce web site, you'll know what I mean. Developers also build their own custom variations to standard applications, and they may use a different parameter name as their session ID. I think the removeparameter META is specific each web site and would better than a system automated through the search engine.

[danieljean]

The only reason for session ids is to keep track of the shopping cart and the checkout. If a person is going to give you their credit card number, it's absurd that they wouldn't allow a session cookie.

How many customers really have a problem with this? I don't think they justify the technical complications, especially with regards to search engines.