Correcting a PHPSESSID Error for Engines?

[Nick W]

hi all,

I had a developer work on a site recently and it appears that some of the changes he's made have caused the site to use sessions and generate PHPSESSID's for all urls affecting bots which do not take cookies of course.

The developer no longer has employment with me.

So, I need to fix this myself and can most likely do it, but my question is: What should I do:

While im fixing the issue? this could take a couple of days, would I be best banning bots for a few days or just let them continue?
When i've fixed it: Is there anything I can do to help eliminate the thousands of dupe urls or should i just let the bots sort it out themselves.

I would just leave it and fix it, but I thought i'd ask in case anyone has any better info than I do...

thanks..

[projectphp]

Just wait is my advicce. Google never index session ID pages anyway, and neither does Yahoo (In my experience). The robots.txt thing is bad news, as you can never be sure how long these are cached. So, sorry, just waiting would be my advice.

[Nick W]

Yeah, that's pretty much what i knew, thanks projectphp!

The good news is, i've just fixed it :) and it wasnt the developers fault, it must have been something that's been going on since the start or since brian (are you reading this you dreadful bloke! hehe...) upgraded the server stuff.

php_value session.allow_trans_sid 0

in htaccess has sorted it out.

Still, the dev still has a lot to answer for but that's a whole 'nother story :)

cheers, it's 3.30 so i really must at least make a token effort at sleep now ha!

Nick

[strategicrankings]

Google never index session ID pages anyway, and neither does Yahoo (In my experience).

One counter example for Yahoo! , 3rd result.

http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=ibl+fidelity+card&n=100

[projectphp]

LOL. That reminds me of my ex who was Japanese. The japanese HATE hyperbole. They have a would for never, best, etc, but never use them, because, well, never is a long time, and there is only one best, so cahnces are whatever you are talking about isn't :)

So yeh, never was the wrong choice of word :)

[strategicrankings]

Hey projectphp,

no problem, :)

on the other hand i've seen google indexed PHPSESSID pages but display them without the PHPSESSIS stuff appended. Did you notice that too?

Thanks
Riley