Can cookies harm your webiste?

[Ideas-Money-Art]

Hi mozzers,

I am doing an seo audit and one of the components of crawlability in the audit template I have is: "Disable Cookies/Make Googlebot user agent", I am not quite sure why cookies could harm your SEO?

Can someone explain me what problems can arise because of cookies? Does it prevent bots to crawl your website like .js on your nav?

Thanks!

[Steve.C]

Bot's don't accept cookies - so if there is a page/section on your site(usually user area requiring login) which requires a cookie in order to access it - the bot wouldn't make it there. If this was a page you needed indexed, that would be a problem.

[JaneCopland]

The instruction in the audit template is probably given to give you a 100% true view of what Google sees when it comes to the website, unobstructed by things meant for humans like cookies, javascript, etc. As Stephen says, Google traditionally does not accept cookies or execute javascript, or do a lot of things that are meant for usability (but may take some of this into account if it's being used for malicious purposes).

This is not about whether cookies are "harmful" and you are not being instructed to turn off cookies on the website itself. You are being instructed to disable your browser from accepting cookies so you get an idea of what Google's experience on the website is like.

Edited to add - posts like this are being shared, literally today, so keep an eye on the Google-accepting-cookies issue, but for the purpose of the site audit, it's just wanting to let you see what Google traditionally sees.