Different version of site for "users" who don't accept cookies considered cloaking?
-
Hi
I've got a client with lots of content that is hidden behind a registration form - if you don't fill it out you can not proceed to the content. As a result it is not being indexed. No surprises there.
They are only doing this because they feel it is the best way of capturing email addresses, rather than the fact that they need to "protect" the content.
Currently users arriving on the site will be redirected to the form if they have not had a "this user is registered" cookie set previously. If the cookie is set then they aren't redirected and get to see the content.
I am considering changing this logic to only redirecting users to the form if they accept cookies but haven't got the "this user is registered cookie". The idea being that search engines would then not be redirected and would index the full site, not the dead end form.
From the clients perspective this would mean only very free non-registered visitors would "avoid" the form, yet search engines are arguably not being treated as a special case.
So my question is: would this be considered cloaking/put the site at risk in any way?
(They would prefer to not go down the First Click Free route as this will lower their email sign-ups.)
Thank you!
-
Yeah - that would work. Well it should work if done the right way.
-
I'm thinking that a javascript pop-up might achieve the same result and be lower risk, especially if the indexed content is visible underneath the pop-up
-
Hi,
You can actually cap FCF at X number of visits per user per day by dropping a cookie. Otherwise what you are proposing is potentially a bit dodgy - if a human tester visits the site and gets a different experience to the bot, you might be at risk. I dbout you will get found out but at the same time, if you want to go pure white hat, then you need to follow the rules. Your call really.
A
-
Hi. Thanks but I don't want to use FCF if I can help it.
-
You can also use Google First Click Free to let it index the site - really easy to set up the run. I suggest you use this, I did it at a previous company and it works so well it's not funny.
More info here:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/10/first-click-free-for-web-search.html
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Are "appliance repair" and "appliance repair los angeles" consider the same keyword?
Hello, I know that you can't optimize two pages for 1 keyword because Google will get confused and will rather prefer my competitor. But I can't get if it will consider "appliance repair" and "appliance repair los angeles" same keywords? The homepage of my website, https://www.ifixappliancesla.com, is optimized for "appliance repair", one of the inner pages is optimized for "appliance repair los angeles". None of them shows on the first page in local SERPs for any of those quires. I am wondering if this is because Google sees it as both pages are optimized for "appliance repair"?
Technical SEO | | VELV0 -
These days on Google results, it also shows the site map. I submitted my company's sitemap and it still does not show?What am I doing wrong?
Look at the image in the link. I want my company to look like the "pluralsight" website in Google. I want it to show the sitemap. I have already submitted the sitemap to Google few days back, what am I doing wrong? search?sourceid=chrome-psyapi2&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8&q=pluralsight&oq=pluralsight&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5.11024j0j8
Technical SEO | | Deein0 -
Changes to website haven't been crawled in over a month
We redesigned our website at http://www.aptinting.com a few months ago. We were fully expecting the crawl frequency to be very low because we had redesigned the website from a format that had been very static, and that probably has something to do with the problem we're currently having. We made some important changes to our homepage about a month ago, and the cached version of that page is still from April 2nd. Yet, whenever we create new pages, they get indexed within days. We've made a point to create lots of new blog articles and case studies to send a message to Google that the website should be crawled at a greater rate. We've also created new links to the homepage through press releases, guest blog articles, and by posting to social media, hoping that all of these things would send a message to Google saying that the homepage should be "reevaluated". However, we seem to be stuck with the April 2nd version of the homepage, which is severely lacking. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Lemmons0 -
Can't find mistake in robots.txt
Hi all, we recently filled our robots.txt file to prevent some directories from crawling. Looks like: User-agent: * Disallow: /Views/ Disallow: /login/ Disallow: /routing/ Disallow: /Profiler/ Disallow: /LILLYPROFILER/ Disallow: /EventRweKompaktProfiler/ Disallow: /AccessIntProfiler/ Disallow: /KellyIntProfiler/ Disallow: /lilly/ now, as Google Webmaster Tools hasn't updated our robots.txt yet, I checked our robots.txt in some ckeckers. They tell me that the User agent: * contains an error. **Example:** **Line 1: Syntax error! Expected <field>:</field> <value></value> 1: User-agent: *** **`I checked other robots.txt written the same way --> they work,`** accordign to the checkers... **`Where the .... is the mistake???`** ```
Technical SEO | | accessKellyOCG0 -
Why aren't certain links showing in SEOMOZ?
Hi, I have been trying to understand our page rank and domains that are linking to us. When I look at the list of linking domains, I see some bigger ones are missing and I don't know why. For example, we are in the Yahoo Directory with a link to trophycentral.com, but SEOMOZ is not showing the link. If SEOMOZ is not seeing it, my guess is Google is not either, which concerns me. There are several onther high page rank domains also not showing. Anyone have any idea why? Thanks! BTW, our domain is trophycentral.com
Technical SEO | | trophycentraltrophiesandawards0 -
Google Has Indexed Most of My Site, why won't Bing?
We've got 600K+ pages indexed by Google and have submitted our same sitemap.xml's to Bing, but have only seen 100-200 pages get indexed by Bing. Is this fairly typical? Is there anything further we can do to increase indexation on Bing?
Technical SEO | | jamesti0 -
Are URL's with trailing slash seen as two different URLs
Hello, http://www.example.com and http://ww.example.com/ Are these seen as two different URL's ? Just as with www or non www ? Or it doesn't make any difference ?
Technical SEO | | seoug_20050 -
Site just will not be reincluded in Google's Index
I asked a question about this site (www.cookinggames.com.au) some time ago http://www.seomoz.org/qa/view/38488/site-indexing-google-doesnt-like-it and had some very helpful answers which were great. However I'm still no further ahead. I have added some more content, submitted a new XML sitemap, removed the 'lorem ipsum...' Now it seems that even Bing have ditched the site too. The number 1 result in Australia for the search term 'cooking games' is now this one - http://www.cookinggames.net.au/ which surely is not so much better to deserve a #1 spot whilst my site is deindexed? I have just had another reconsideration request 'denied' and am absolutely out of ideas/. If anyone can help suggest what I need to do... or even suggest how I can get feedback from the search engines what's wring that would be fantastic. Thank you David
Technical SEO | | OzDave0