Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
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.
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
-
Local SEO - ranking the same page for multiple locations
Hi everyone, I am aware that issue of local SEO has been approached numerous times, but the situation that I'm dealing with is slightly different, so I'd love to receive your expert advice. I'm running the website of a property management company which services multiple locations (www.homevault.com). From our local offices in the city center, we also service neighboring towns and communities ( ex: we have an office in Charlotte NC, from which we service Charlotte plus a dozen other towns nearby). We wanted to avoid creating dozens of extra local service pages, particularly since our offers are identical per metropolitan area and we're talking of 20-30 additional local pages for each area. Instead, we decided to create local service pages only for the main locations. Needless to say, we're now ranking for the main locations, but we're missing on all searches for property management in neighboring towns (we're doing good on searches such as 'charlotte property management', but we're practically invisible for 'davidson property management', although we're searvicing that area as well). What we've done so far to try and fix the situation: 1. The current location pages do include descriptions of areas that we serve. 2. We've included 1-2 keywords for the sattelite locations in the main location pages, but we're nowhere near the optimization needed to rank for local searches in neighboring towns (ie, some main local service pages rank on pages 2-4 for sattelite towns, so not good enough). 3. We've included the searviced areas in our local GMBs, directories, social media profiles etc. None of these solutions appear to work great. Should I go ahead and create the classic local pages for each and every town and optimize them on those particular keywords, even if the offer is practically the same, and the number of pages risks going out of control? Any other better ideas? Many thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HomeVaultPM0 -
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 -
Mobile Googlebot vs Desktop Googlebot - GWT reports - Crawl errors
Hi Everyone, I have a very specific SEO question. I am doing a site audit and one of the crawl reports is showing tons of 404's for the "smartphone" bot and with very recent crawl dates. If our website is responsive, and we do not have a mobile version of the website I do not understand why the desktop report version has tons of 404's and yet the smartphone does not. I think I am not understanding something conceptually. I think it has something to do with this little message in the Mobile crawl report. "Errors that occurred only when your site was crawled by Googlebot (errors didn't appear for desktop)." If I understand correctly, the "smartphone" report will only show URL's that are not on the desktop report. Is this correct?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Carla_Dawson0 -
Why would our server return a 301 status code when Googlebot visits from one IP, but a 200 from a different IP?
I have begun a daily process of analyzing a site's Web server log files and have noticed something that seems odd. There are several IP addresses from which Googlebot crawls that our server returns a 301 status code for every request, consistently, day after day. In nearly all cases, these are not URLs that should 301. When Googlebot visits from other IP addresses, the exact same pages are returned with a 200 status code. Is this normal? If so, why? If not, why not? I am concerned that our server returning an inaccurate status code is interfering with the site being effectively crawled as quickly and as often as it might be if this weren't happening. Thanks guys!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | danatanseo0 -
Where is the best place to put a sitemap for a site with local content?
I have a simple site that has cities as subdirectories (so URL is root/cityname). All of my content is localized for the city. My "root" page simply links to other cities. I very specifically want to rank for "topic" pages for each city and I'm trying to figure out where to put the sitemap so Google crawls everything most efficiently. I'm debating the following options, which one is better? Put the sitemap on the footer of "root" and link to all popular pages across cities. The advantage here is obviously that the links are one less click away from root. Put the sitemap on the footer of "city root" (e.g. root/cityname) and include all topics for that city. This is how Yelp does it. The advantage here is that the content is "localized" but the disadvantage is it's further away from the root. Put the sitemap on the footer of "city root" and include all topics across all cities. That way wherever Google comes into the site they'll be close to all topics I want to rank for. Thoughts? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jcgoodrich0 -
Code to change country in URL for locale results
How do I change the code in my URL to search in Google by specific location?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | theLotter0 -
Robots.txt is blocking Wordpress Pages from Googlebot?
I have a robots.txt file on my server, which I did not develop, it was done by the web designer at the company before me. Then there is a word press plugin that generates a robots.txt file. How Do I unblock all the wordpress pages from googlebot?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ENSO0 -
Googlebot HTTP 204 Status Code Handling?
If a user runs a search that returns no results, and the server returns a 204 (No Content), will Googlebot treat that as the rough equivalent of a 404 or a noindex? If not, then it seems one would want to noindex the page to avoid low quality penalties, but that might require more back and forth with the server, which isn't ideal. Kurus
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kurus0