How to add a disclaimer to a site but keep the content accessible to search robots?

[GroupM_APAC]

Hi,

I have a client with a site regulated by the UK FSA (Financial Services Authority). They have to display a disclaimer which visitor must accept before browsing. This is for real, not like the EU cookie compliance debacle

Currently the site 302 redirects anyone not already cookied (as having accepted) to a disclaimer page/form. Do you have any suggestions or examples of how to require acceptance while maintaining accessibility?

I'm not sure just using a jquery lightbox would meet the FSA's requirements, as it wouldn't be shown if JS was not enabled.

Thanks,

-Jason

[prima-253509]

That is rough,

maybe a legitimate situation for user agent sniffing (albeit fraught with danger)? If you can't rely on javascript then it would seem that any option will have significant downsides.

This may be a hair-brained suggestion but what about appending a server parameter to all links for those who do not have a cookie set?  if the user agent is google or bing (or any other search bot) the server could ignore that parameter and send them on their way to the correct page, however if the user agent is not a search engine then they would be forced to the disclaimer page.

This would allow for a user to see the initial content (which may not be allowed?) but not navigate the site, however it would also allow you to present the same info to both user and agent while making the user accept the terms.

Alternatively serve up a version of the page that has the div containing the disclaimer form expand to fill the whole viewport to non-cookied visitors and set the style to position:fixed which should keep the visitor from scrolling past the div, but it will still render the content below the viewport. Thus cookied visitors don't see a form but non-cookied visitors get the same page content but can't scroll to it until they accept the form (mobile does weird things with position fixe, so this again might not work, and a savy user could get around it).

Edit: Just found this article which looks promising. It is a google doc on how to allow crawls on a cookied domain https://developers.google.com/search-appliance/documentation/50/help_gsa/crawl_cookies might solve the problem in a more elegant, safe way.

Would be interested to hear what you come up with. If you could rely on javascript then there are many ways to do it.

Cheers!

[GroupM_APAC]

Joshua thanks for your suggestions.

Fixed div idea is good but not sure it will pass FSA compliance.

Google search appliance config article is interesting and provides some ideas but not sure how to go about implementing for Googlebot.

Suppose reverse dns lookup (http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=80553) may provide a solution. Was hoping someone that had implemented something similar may share their experience.

Cheers.