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Crawlers & Sessions

Discussion in 'PHP' started by danpadams, Mar 21, 2005.

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  1. #1
    I am curious, what happens if the idea of a session is used, regardless of whether it is cookie or URL based and a crawler gets to it? Will that crawler be just as if a regular user came but they had cookies turned off?
     
    danpadams, Mar 21, 2005 IP
  2. noppid

    noppid gunnin' for the quota

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    #2
    noppid, Mar 21, 2005 IP
  3. danpadams

    danpadams Peon

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    #3
    First off, I have read and even subscribed to that thread, before I made my post. I do not wish to derail a topic in a tread if I can help it.

    My question once again, it actually differs from the other thread slightly, suppose session_create() is called regardless of whether the visitor is a crawler or now, what would happen in the case that it is a crawler?
     
    danpadams, Mar 21, 2005 IP
  4. noppid

    noppid gunnin' for the quota

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    #4
    I'll be sure to never try and help again. ;)

    Cheers.
     
    noppid, Mar 21, 2005 IP
  5. danpadams

    danpadams Peon

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    #5
    I wasn't asking you not to help. All I was asking is what would happen in a specific situation. Seriously do you or anyone else have an idea to this one? I know I have been able to use this tactic with the search engines, with only having the pages that have session_create in them that will either be treated as non-sesion requests or that the search engines will not enter, because of a login being required.
     
    danpadams, Mar 21, 2005 IP
  6. danpadams

    danpadams Peon

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    #6
    :( Please Accecpt My Apology :(

    I honestly do want any and all help I can get. I also do not want to step on anyones toes.
     
    danpadams, Mar 21, 2005 IP
  7. sarahk

    sarahk iTamer Staff

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    #7
    Hey guys, relax.

    The problem with SIDs is only when they're shown to the spider

    You may not see it in the browser but the spider will see.

    Scan you site using a tool like Xenu and see if the session id is shown.

    Test it out on this link: http://bbs2.stardestroyer.net/Archive/viewtopic.php?t=32003&view=previous&sid=0dd2838ac669894b3a6227201c6bc496

    If so, what will happen is Google et at will visit and get X number of links. It will return and not find the page it requests but get another X pages and sting you for duplicate content.

    Worse it'll look at the urls it's getting and recognise "stop words" like sid= or that the parameter passed is 16 or 32 characters long - and then not even bother to visit the page.

    The risk for a search engine with a session id relates to the fact that it thinks you are serving custom content based on what it has already seen or selected, so it could direct a user back to the page and the user would get a, potentially, different page.

    If you're running a reputable search engine can you afford that risk?

    So, rule of thumb, don't start the session unless you actually need it.

    Sarah
     
    sarahk, Mar 22, 2005 IP