Question about spiders and redirection

[xraymikek]

I want to redirect people from my homepage and main site to another set of pages for their first visit. Once they have been through that set of pages one time, I want to dump them back off on the homepage. The easiest way I know is to set a cookie. The problem I expect is that spiders will not allow a cookie to be set, so they will always get redirected from the homepage, no matter what.

How do I use cookies properly to redirect my visitors without spiders getting stuck in that set of pages. Or, is there a better method? Maybe htaccess?

 

[xraymikek]

Bump. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

 

[Ricardog]

Can you set the cookie first and then redirect them *if* the cookie has been set? Because spiders don't accept cookies, you would then only redirect people who have the cookie (real users). On subsequent visits, you'll need to check the cookie to see if the user has already been on the "tour" and redirect based on the actual value of the cookie.

Hope this helps,
Ric

 

[xmcp123]

This is cloaking, and you're going to need a fair amount of tech knowledge and are going to have to deal with risk if you want to do this.
On a related note, fuck google.

 

[Ricardog]

Yes, technically this is cloaking, but considering the fact that the search engine is being directed to the same pages that users are (unless they happen to be first-time visitors), I wouldn't view it as malicious, and I consider it unlikely that you'd see a penalty from Google, but there is at least some risk here.

 

[xmcp123]

Yes, technically this is cloaking, but considering the fact that the search engine is being directed to the same pages that users are (unless they happen to be first-time visitors), I wouldn't view it as malicious, and I consider it unlikely that you'd see a penalty from Google, but there is at least some risk here.

If you redirect the search engines to the same page as the user, they will only index the home page.
If you do not, it's cloaking.
And while it's not malicious, you seem to be under the mistaken idea that Google is reasonable.

 

[Ricardog]

How about just going with a safer approach all around? If the user doesn't have a cookie, show a big popup or something that says "New users click here for the tour." Then, the search engines and your users get the same page, and you've avoided any appearance of cloaking.