Can cookies harm your webiste?
-
Hi mozzers,
I am doing an seo audit and one of the components of crawlability in the audit template I have is: "Disable Cookies/Make Googlebot user agent", I am not quite sure why cookies could harm your SEO?
Can someone explain me what problems can arise because of cookies? Does it prevent bots to crawl your website like .js on your nav?
Thanks!
-
The instruction in the audit template is probably given to give you a 100% true view of what Google sees when it comes to the website, unobstructed by things meant for humans like cookies, javascript, etc. As Stephen says, Google traditionally does not accept cookies or execute javascript, or do a lot of things that are meant for usability (but may take some of this into account if it's being used for malicious purposes).
This is not about whether cookies are "harmful" and you are not being instructed to turn off cookies on the website itself. You are being instructed to disable your browser from accepting cookies so you get an idea of what Google's experience on the website is like.
Edited to add - posts like this are being shared, literally today, so keep an eye on the Google-accepting-cookies issue, but for the purpose of the site audit, it's just wanting to let you see what Google traditionally sees.
-
Bot's don't accept cookies - so if there is a page/section on your site(usually user area requiring login) which requires a cookie in order to access it - the bot wouldn't make it there. If this was a page you needed indexed, that would be a problem.
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
-
How I can get higher DA for sub-domian?
I have created a sub-domin https://travellife.egsky.net, Should it be treated as an independent site with regard to the site map and the internal links between it and the main domin egsky.net .which is better to obtain a higher Domain Authority? For example, when I adding a photo image for the sub-domin, Is it added on site map of the sub-domin or added for the 2 sites? Luxor-and-Aswan-Nile-Cruises-e1609000647702.jpg
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | egskylife0 -
Can have FAQ schema code in home page?
Hi, can we have FAQ schema code in Home page ? we wrote some question and answer in drop down box on home page, and also add the schema code script to the head tag of page, but it does not work !,( other pages of our site show the FAQ in the SERP correctly) I want to know this problem is because its on Home Page ? or because its in Drop down style ? its the url of our site: http://payamgostar.com/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | allenwebmaster0 -
Penalized because of Pharma Wordpress Hack, Fixed, When can we expect to get out?
Hey Guys, so one of our clients hired a web designers to re do his site. Unfortunately in the process the client got a nasty pharma hack and we had to completely re do his site in drupal by scratch because it was so difficult to remove the hack. In this process his lost all his rankings, sub 100 and the hack produced super low quality links from drug related sites pointing to his pages. We're 100% certain the hack is gone, we've disavowed every link, and used WMT to deindex all the drug pages the hack had created. Still 2 weeks later he is sub 100. Does anyone else know of any way to push this along faster? I wish there was some way to get Google to recognize its fixed faster as his business is destroyed.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | iAnalyst.com0 -
Can a website be punished by panda if content scrapers have duplicated content?
I've noticed recently that a number of content scrapers are linking to one of our websites and have the duplicate content on their web pages. Can content scrapers affect the original website's ranking? I'm concerned that having duplicated content, even if hosted by scrapers, could be a bad signal to Google. What are the best ways to prevent this happening? I'd really appreciate any help as I can't find the answer online!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RG_SEO0 -
Can we retrieve all 404 pages of my site?
Hi, Can we retrieve all 404 pages of my site? is there any syntax i can use in Google search to list just pages that give 404? Tool/Site that can scan all pages in Google Index and give me this report. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mtthompsons0 -
Can anyone help me clean up my link profile?
Hi, I've been struggling with my rankings for some 18 months or so. It seems like the plan is to review my back links and remove or disavow the ones that could be causing my site problems. Unfortunately I neither have the time or expertise to perform this task and wonder if there are any freelancers who could work on this project? I look forward to hearing from anyone.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Aikijeff0 -
Blocking Pages Via Robots, Can Images On Those Pages Be Included In Image Search
Hi! I have pages within my forum where visitors can upload photos. When they upload photos they provide a simple statement about the photo but no real information about the image,definitely not enough for the page to be deemed worthy of being indexed. The industry however is one that really leans on images and having the images in Google Image search is important to us. The url structure is like such: domain.com/community/photos/~username~/picture111111.aspx I wish to block the whole folder from Googlebot to prevent these low quality pages from being added to Google's main SERP results. This would be something like this: User-agent: googlebot Disallow: /community/photos/ Can I disallow Googlebot specifically rather than just using User-agent: * which would then allow googlebot-image to pick up the photos? I plan on configuring a way to add meaningful alt attributes and image names to assist in visibility, but the actual act of blocking the pages and getting the images picked up... Is this possible? Thanks! Leona
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HD_Leona0