Googlebot on paywall made with cookies and local storage
-
My question is about paywalls made with cookies and local storage. We are changing a website with free content to a open paywall with a 5 article view weekly limit.
The paywall is made to work with cookies and local storage. The article views are stored to local storage but you have to have your cookies enabled so that you can read the free articles. If you don't have cookies enable we would pass an error page (otherwise the paywall would be easy to bypass).
Can you say how this affects SEO? We would still like that Google would index all article pages that it does now.
Would it be cloaking if we treated Googlebot differently so that when it does not have cookies enabled, it would still be able to index the page?
-
Thank you for your answer!
Yes, that is exactly the case.
We have been testing this and it seems that "Googlebot" doesn't hit the wall at all with the normal settings on. With these results it seems that we don't need to treat "Googlebot" differently because it doesn't seem to store any cookie or local storage data.
Tech savvy users can bypass the pay wall by other means as well so that's not a big concern for us.
-
To make sure that I'm getting your question correct. You want Google to crawl and index all your content but you want visitors to use an open paywall that shows 5 free articles then resorts to a paywall.
Yes, it would be treated as cloaking but you have a legitimate reason for doing so and intent matters a great deal. You could check for a search engine user-agent string such as "Googlebot" and then serve the full content. This would ensure that your content is still crawled and indexed.
The only downside is any tech savvy individual can spoof the server header by setting their user-agent to "Googlebot" and bypass your paywall.
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 to get local search volumes?
Hi Guys, I want to get search volumes for "carpet cleaning" for certain areas in Sydney, Australia. I'm using this process: Choose to ‘Search for new keyword and ad group ideas’. Enter the main keywords regarding your product / service Remove any default country targeting Specify your chosen location (s) by targeting specific cities / regions Click to ‘Get ideas’ The problem is none of the areas, even popular ones (like north sydney, surry hills, newtown, manly) are appearing and Google keyword tool, no matches. Is there any other tools or sources of data i can use to get accurate search volumes for these areas? Any recommendations would be very much appreciated. Cheers
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wozniak650 -
How does Googlebot evaluate performance/page speed on Isomorphic/Single Page Applications?
I'm curious how Google evaluates pagespeed for SPAs. Initial payloads are inherently large (resulting in 5+ second load times), but subsequent requests are lightning fast, as these requests are handled by JS fetching data from the backend. Does Google evaluate pages on a URL-by-URL basis, looking at the initial payload (and "slow"-ish load time) for each? Or do they load the initial JS+HTML and then continue to crawl from there? Another way of putting it: is Googlebot essentially "refreshing" for each page and therefore associating each URL with a higher load time? Or will pages that are crawled after the initial payload benefit from the speedier load time? Any insight (or speculation) would be much appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mothner1 -
Local business with two separate websites...what to do?
Hey Mozzers! I have a client that I'm helping with some online ad campaigns for lead generation, but they recently had an SEO issue pop up I'm looking into for them. For whatever reason, they have 2 websites. Those are: http://www.healthsourceofroyalpalmbeach.com/ (newer site) http://www.healthsourcedecompression.com/ (older site) Their local listing is connected to the older site (above) and that's where they have all of their reviews. I know the BEST solution is probably to nix one of the sites and setup proper redirects, but how can they keep BOTH sites without damaging their SEO efforts? Currently, BOTH sites rank on page one for their primary kw target "chiropractors royal palm beach fl" Appreciate the help! Ricky
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RickyShockley0 -
Two identical websites need ranking locally
Hi Wondering if someone can advise. We have two websites with a .ie domian and .co.uk domain (e-commerce stores) The websites are identical so we need to address duplicate content issue. The issue we have is we are targeting both local Google to rank, google.ie and google.co.uk. Obviously to handle duplicate content we are going to have to "rel can" the one of the websites, which will probably be the .ie domain. Question is, will this effect the ranking within the .ie domian on google.ie. And any advice on how anyone else handles this situation would be greatly appreciated, we have had no issue ranking before with one domain on a local search engine, but this is the first time we have come across needing to rank two domains with identical content on each local search engine Thanks in advance John
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Johnny4B0 -
Ranking locally without local keywords in title?
I have a website that targets national keywords. I would like to be able to rank locally for these keywords as well without having the city in the title. What is the best strategy for this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cprodigy290 -
Sitelinks in 7-pack / blended / local results
I have a client who has been ranking well in the 7-pack for local searches, for 1.5+ years. I recently noticed a competitor's Google Places link has little sitelinks attached, but my client's link doesn't have them. This makes me sad. To provide a concise question: what can I do to help my client get sitelinks along with his Google Places listing in the 7-pack / blended / local results? Some example data: My client's business is called Ambiance Dental and his website is www.mycalgarydentist.com. An example search to see what I'm talking about is "calgary family dentist". The competitor that's showing sitelinks is www.aestheticdentalstudio.ca which has a title of "Dentist in Calgary | Cosmetic Treatment in Calgary". The sitelinks you'll see are "Dr. Gordon Chee", "Links", "Dr. Alexa Geminiano". Notice that my client doesn't have the same sitelinks. Some further data: If you do a a search for "calgary aesthetic dentist" you'll see the competitor's 1-box local result (is that what it's called?) with his Google Places data and sitelinks. If you search for "calgary ambiance dentist" you'll get a similar layout SERP for my client, again with no sitelinks. My client's sitelinks: If you search for "ambiance dental calgary" you'll see that Google does offer sitelinks for his site, just not in Google Places it seems. My client's website: My client's website has the navigation coded as a list (UL) without any javascript or complicated code messing things up. The competitor's navigation is built similarly, though he has about 40 more pages in his main navigation. My client's page names are concise, which I've read helps with sitelinks, the website is coded very cleanly, the URLs of his site are clear and concise without a complicated folder structure, so it seems like we're doing everything right. I appreciate any input other mozzers can provide, and discussion on the topic. I'm sure there are others who would benefit from local sitelinks as well!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kenoshi0 -
Local Search without the user typing local?
Hi, I'm a somewhat regionally based voip provider for businesses. So I'm not interested in getting the #1 ranking for voip, but I'd like to get the top for my region. So in this case asheville voip and related searches. However, I know that alot of users in Asheville are not typing in Asheville voip when they google. They're just typing in voip or free voip, or cisco voip. Here's my Google Insight Search: http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=voip&geo=US-NC&date=today%2012-m&cmpt=q So what I was thinking about doing was in addition to my main site. Building several smaller 'educational based sites' about the benefits of VOIP. Based on google insights something like ashevillevoipphone.com. And use it to capture leads and link to my main site. So my question is this: Is this a good strategy? If people in Asheville are just typing in voip phone, will ashevillevoipphone.com automatically have a better chance at a higher ranking? Thanksd David
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | StraightRazorDesigns0 -
One Website - Local + National Ranking
If a client (e.g. a winery) wants to rank both nationally and locally, what are some best practices for doing this on one Website? So the goal is to: Rank nationally for their wines, wine varietals, etc.so they're found by restaurants, distributors, customers (could include national directories, content creation ,etc.) Rank locally for their tasting room and wines for people looking locally or looking at that specific region (this could also include include Google places, local directories, etc.). I'm wondering if the site would need to be subdivided (or "siloed") where one section is heavily focused on national and another is on regional? Also, for the home page, which focus would be most important (maybe national because it's harder)? Thanks a for any ideas! Tom
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DirectionSEO0