Can a hidden menu damage a website page?

[ICTADVIS]

Website (A) - has a landing page offering courses

Website (B) - ( A different organisation) has a link to Website A. The goal landing page when you click on he link takes you to Website A's Courses page which is already a popular page with visitors who search for or come directly into Website A.

Owners of Website A want to ADD an Extra Menu Item to the MENU BAR on their Courses page to offer some specific courses to visitors who come from Website (B) to Website (A) - BUT the additional MENU ITEM is ONLY TO BE DISPLAYED if you come from having clicked on the link at Website (B).

This link both parties are intending to track

However, if you come to the Courses landing page on Website (A) directly from a search engine or directly typing in the URL address of the landing page - you will not see this EXTRA Menu Item with its link to courses, it only appears should you visit Website (A) having come from Website (B).

The above approach is making me twitch as to what the programmer wants to do as to me this looks like a form of 'cloaking'. What I am not understanding that Website (A) URL ADDRESS landing page is demonstrating outwardly to Google a Menu Bar that appears normal, but I come to the same URL ADDRESS from Website (B) and I end up seeing an ADDITIONAL MENU ITEM

How will Google look at this LANDING PAGE? Surely it must see the CODING INSTRUCTIONS sitting there behind this page to assist it in serving up in effect TWO VERSIONS of the page when actually the URL itself does not change.

What should I advise the developer as I don't want the landing page of Website (A) which is doing fine right now, end up with some sort of penalty from the search engines through this exercise.

Many thanks in advance of answers from the community.

[William.Lau]

Its not cloaking.

However, I'd suggest adding a noindex, nofollow to that landing page, so there is no confusion between which is the original. The company I currently work for, we noindex, nofollow all of our testing pages that have different linking structure, and works well for us. Our test pages are activate under certain criterias like new user, 2nd time user etc.

[Kurt_Steinbrueck]

Hi Brian,

I haven't come across anyone doing this exact situation before, but I don't think it's anything to be concerned with.  If you are just giving a single extra menu item to a navigation menu, I don't think it's enough to raise any flags.

I disagree with William, though, about adding the noindex and nofollow.  It sounds like this is not a temporary test and you are getting traffic to the page from the search engines.  So, I wouldn't sacrifice that traffic for extra caution.

I think you'll be fine adding the menu item.

Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com

[ICTADVIS]

Thanks to both William and Kurt for your taking the time to respond to my question. I agree, this situation is unusual, the web developer I am working with is not a marketer and very much a programmer and his skill set is normally centred around bringing together end to end ecommerce solutions, but leaves the marketing to me and my team.

What we are dealing with here are actually two academic websites, with academics who are not marketers at the centre of requirements as to what 'they' want. So my developer partner is having to work on what the client wants and the client is required to satisfy an external other 3rd party website which, when you read my question they are referred to as Website (B).

My personal thought was why not just create a specific landing page that is very much targeted for this audience coming from Website (B) and have a deal tailored for them on that page. The call to action could have behind it something very specific (a voucher code or something) unique to that audience being able to take up the offer and so not interfere with my very public facing page that is already a popular landing page that I really don't want to have interfered with.

If you guys or anybody else has any further thought on this I very much appreciate it.

[Kurt_Steinbrueck]

I'd say having a unique landing page just for that specific segment is a very good idea for the user experience.  Even though I don't think you'd have an SEO issue with their original idea, this would certainly remove all doubt.

[ICTADVIS]

Kurt thanks for your further contribution to this question.

I refer back to a book that I once read by Steve Krugg - Don't Make Me Think

And I am very focused on parachuting the visitor into the right page with the right information that is targeted towards that end user you want to then 'convert' - and as you say there is no confusion who the page is for. And this way it can be better measurable in analytics.

[Kurt_Steinbrueck]

Great book.