Hi,

My local council site (.gov.uk) has recently implemented a 'splash screen' to ask the user if they would like to view content in English or Welsh before they can enter the site.

Will this affect the ability for search engines to properly crawl for pages within the site or does it not matter in this case because it is a large government site?

Thanks.

GH

It might, do but do think the local council know or even care??

Not verybody is bothered about search engines primarily some people actually care about the USERS!! and don't give a moments thought to search engines Which is how it should be.

But isn't it useful when for example a council resident wants to search for 'Liverpool Rubbish collection" in google without having to go into the website? What I'm curious about is whether the splash screen would affect all pages getting indexed like this making searching from google more difficult.

So long as you link to any other site page from the splash page then search engines will start to crawl content just fine, and index it if it thinks it's useful.

Originally Posted by blue-dreamer

So long as you link to any other site page from the splash page then search engines will start to crawl content just fine, and index it if it thinks it's useful.

sorry, not sure what you mean:

here is the site: http://www.cardiff.gov.uk

But isn't it useful when for example a council resident wants to search for 'Liverpool Rubbish collection"

It could be, but councils expect that people know where their site is and would go directly there and use the search on the site.

But as usual, the idea that Search Engines always "start at the home page" is a complete fallacy. ANY page can and will be an "entry page" only the "link building experts" are clueless enough to get ALL the links to the "home page" others are more sensible and get links to ANY pages.