Different URLs for signed in and signed out users

[SEONOW123]

Hello,

I have a client that plans to use different URLs for signed in and signed out customers.

My concern is that signed in and signed out customers will provide back links to different URLs of the same page and thus split page rank. I'm assuimg the URL for signed in customers won't be fetched by Google and therefore rule out canonicalizing the signed in URL to the signed out version.

The solution for me would be to ensure that there is only one URL for each content page, and to instead use cookies to prompt customers to sign up to the service that aren’t already a customer.

However, please correct me if I’m wrong in my assumptions.

Thanks

[becole]

JM123, you can be assured that Google and it's bots don't create accounts--so they will never be able to sign in and sign out.

That said, you could technically deliver unique content to all signed-in users, because Google will never sign in and see that content.

What's important is the content that you do give to users that are NOT signed in. You should concentrate on that content to that it's unique and other pages aren't duplicated (thus having a duplicate content issue).

[TheSymmetran]

How is it that signed in and signed out users get different urls for the same page, I have never actually seen this practice in any CMS I have seen or used before. Client should not decide these things... you as the developer or the seo should provide the right way of doing things and explain to them why. To say the least you are dealing with duplicate content as as risk and in that case you can use canonical tag to specify the primary page.

But I would not listen to the client for what they demand, a lot of times clients have no friggin clue about this stuff and ask the vendors to shoot them in their own foot... good vendors will counter with proper reasoning and explanation and if you are the SEO in charge in this case, know that their insisting decisions will have major implications in the results you get and the treatment and longevity of contract you get from these clients... just my 2 cents from few years of doing this as a freelancer, but now I am running my own team and agency and client says this does not mean anything to me anymore when it comes to technical decisions. I ask them about their end goal and find the right way of achieving that.