I am currently trying to incorporate SEO techniques for a large client
which sells alcohol based products.
As the site users legally requires users to be over the legal drinking
age to use the site, the first page of the client's website is a
gateway page asking the user to confirm their country of residence and
date of birth.
My question is, can Googlebot navigate beyond this gateway page in
order to index the other pages, or are SEO practices on these other
pages wasted due to the original age restriction barrier?
I guess it would be understandable if the pages were only indexed on
non safe search results. Anyone know the answer?
> My question is, can Googlebot navigate beyond this gateway page in
> order to index the other pages, or are SEO practices on these other
> pages wasted due to the original age restriction barrier?
> > My question is, can Googlebot navigate beyond this gateway page in
> > order to index the other pages, or are SEO practices on these other
> > pages wasted due to the original age restriction barrier?
And how exactly do you propose to solve the situation where a, shall
we say, "kid", having seen the homepage that asks for age and all
that, and feeling "honest", said "kid" won't simply do a site: search
(hey, some kids are smart) and click on any other page listed and
enter the site having thus bypassed the original question and not
having lied either?
Sessions? cookies?
Seems to me the powers that be are losing sights of reality. There's a
world of difference between visiting a site dealing with alcohol
products and buying them. And I'd argue until I'm blue in the face
that it is not the same situation as with "adult" sites that add the
same kind of gateway page. In the latter case, entering the site
indeed is tantamount to "using" and "perusing" the wares.
But I digress.
> Thanks Phil, that's as I suspected! Good to have the clarification.
> On Oct 17, 11:31 am, Phil Payne wrote:
> > On Oct 17, 11:11 am, Andi Smith wrote:
> > > My question is, can Googlebot navigate beyond this gateway page in
> > > order to index the other pages, or are SEO practices on these other
> > > pages wasted due to the original age restriction barrier?
> > Sounds like a good case for an XML sitemap.- Hide quoted text -
This topic comes up periodically for sites (alcohol, porn, etc.) that
need to serve an age verification notice on every page. What we
recommend in this case is to serve it via JavaScript. That way users
can see the age verification any time they try to access your content,
but search engines that don't run JavaScript won't see the warning and
will instead be able to see your content.
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