Basic SEO: What Search Engines Hate - Session IDs
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Session IDs can cause many of the same problems as parameters if they are in a URL. A session ID is used to identify individual users visiting a site at a specific time. It allows the server to keep track of what pages the user views and what actions he/she takes, making it easier for web developers to create interactive sites.
The server sets cookies (text files containing information only that particular server can read) on the computer with the session ID and the developer can see where the user was at the end of his/her last session. The session IDs themselves are either created and stored in cookies or placed in the URL (usually done if the user's browser is set not to accept cookies).
Most search engines probably won't read a page if it recognizes a session ID in the URL due to the fact that each time the searchbot returns, the original session ID will have expired, creating several URLs for the same page. And if it does read the page, it either won't index it or will index an undetermined number of URLs pointing to the same page. However, there are ways to avoid running your site through URLs with sessions IDs.
First of all, you can store the session information in cookies on the user's computer, despite the fact that some users block cookies. However, the server should not require cookies because searchbots don't accept cookies (or do they?). You have to decide whether you want to take that risk. You can also omit session IDs when a searchbot requests the page from the server. Some do not recommend this technique because it can be misconstrued as cloaking (sending one page to the search engines and another to visitors), but because you actually are trying to show the same site that the visitors see, it isn't really cloaking.
These are just a few of the major things that search engines hate. Some may have been obvious to SEO experts, but I hope you could at least get something useful out of this article. Otherwise it was probably a waste of your time. And I know you hate that.
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