Client wants to show 2 different types of content based on cookie usage - potential cloaking issue?

[steviephil]

Hi,

A client of mine has compliance issues in their industry and has to show two different types of content to visitors:

• domain.com/customer-a/about-us
• domain.com/customer-b/about-us

Next year, they have to increase that to three different types of customer. Rather than creating a third section (customer-c), because it's very similar to one of the types of customers already (customer-b), their web development agency is suggesting changing the content based on cookies, so if a user has indentified themselves as customer-b, they'll be shown /customer-b/, but if they've identified themselves as customer-c, they'll see a different version of /customer-b/ - in other words, the URL won't change, but the content on the page will change, based on their cookie selection.

I'm uneasy about this from an SEO POV because:

1. Google will only be able to see one version (/customer-b/ presumably), so it might miss out on indexing valuable /customer-c/ content,
2. It makes sense to separate them into three URL paths so that Google can index them all,
3. It feels like a form of cloaking - i.e. Google only sees one version, when two versions are actually available.

I've done some research but everything I'm seeing is saying that it's fine, that it's not a form of cloaking. I can't find any examples specific to this situation though. Any input/advice would be appreciated.

Note: The content isn't shown differently based on geography - i.e. these three customers would be within one country (e.g. the UK), which means that hreflang/geo-targeting won't be a workaround unfortunately.

[steviephil]

Thanks Peter - I didn't know you could do that. I'll pass it on to the developers (who might already know, but wouldn't hurt to reinforce its importance).

[steviephil]

Thanks Russ. I think the differences to the content between the two will only be minor/superficial, so I guess the approach makes sense and shouldn't affect the SEO side of things too much.

[Mobilio]

You can return same page with different content based on cookie safe. Just don't forget to add "Vary: Cookie" in headers. This will to told browsers and bots that this content is different based on cookie.

[rjonesx. 0]

I think this sounds perfectly fine. It is highly unlikely that you will see any problems from this, just don't expect to rank for content that is hidden behind a cookie-based authentication. It might not be best-practice in Google's eyes, but it isn't going to trigger any kind of penalty.