Cookies and redirects - what are the negative effects?

[seomasters]

I am advising a client who wants to streamline their online customers experience through the use of cookies.

The first time someone visits mysite.com, they will visit the normal index page, and on that page will be asked to identify themselves as a Personal or Business customer - and taken through to a relevant page. This will result in a cookie being added.

The next time they come back to mysite.com, the cookie will automatically direct them from the index page to mysite.com/personal/ or mysite.com/business/.

My question is, what are the SEO implications of this, especially given the fact the index page is their primary landing page for almost all organic traffic?

Bots

I realise that googlebot etc do not store cookies, so this should result in no change from the bots perspective (i.e. no redirect) but is it that simple? In effect we'll be showing the bot one thing and second time + visitors something else. Is this not effectively cloaking?

All advice gratefully received!

[RyanKent]

Is this not effectively cloaking?

Not at all. You are offering a very legitimate choice to users and you offer the same choice to bots. The option is clearly designed to maximize the user experience, not to manipulate search rankings.

Googlebot has the ability to choose an option even thought it normally will not. Googlebot even has the ability to complete simple online forms entering a name, address, phone number, yes/no options, etc. I am confident it will understand your design. It is not all that different in concept to sites which offer content in various languages based on a manual choice.