Is there a primer for session id?

[Trentide]

I'm in the process of SEO'ing my new site. On one of the posts it mentioned, among other things, "session id kill for spiders". I'm trying to wrap my brain around the whole concept of spiders and session id's, but keep getting just bits and pieces in the forums. My question to you is:

 

1) What is a session id?

2) Why do I want to kill it for spiders?

3) How does it effect SEO?

 

Any and all insight into this is very much appreciated.

 

Thanks,

Jason

[Jack_mcs]

1 - It's a method of tracking a visitors movement through your site. If they add an item to the cart, the session ID will remember it as they move around to other pages. Without it, the cart would empty upon going to the next page.

 

2 - Because session ID's are specific to a certain customer, if that session ID was listed in the search engine pages, someone clicking on the link could end up in someone elses cart, which is not good.

 

3 - Having the long URL's can cause problems with the search engines. Installing the Ultimate SEO contribution will take care of that. Other than that, it has no affect on SEO.

 

When the search engines search your site, they do so with scripts that connect to your site and search through the various pages. These scripts are commonly called spiders. You don't need the SID Killer contribution. Just update the spiders file, which lists known, good, spiders, and set the Prevent Spiders option to true in admin and you should be all set.

 

Jack

[Trentide]

Thank you so much for your info! I totally understand everything you had to say. A couple of things at the end I didn't quite understand though:

 

1) How do you update the spiders file?

 

2) Why would I want to set the Prevent Spiders option to true in admin? Don't I want spiders to come to my site and look around?

 

Thank you so much! I really appreciate your help!

 

jason

[Jack_mcs]

1 - There is a contribution that is updated fairly often. Just download it, extract the file and upload that to your server. Instructions are in the contribution package.

 

2 - The option is Prevent Spider Sessions, not Prevent Spiders. It prevents session IDs from being granted to spiders.

 

Jack

[Trentide]

Thanks Jack! I totally appreciate it!

 

Jason