As far as a i know Google thinks PHPSESSIDs are bad because google will think its duplicate text.

i'm in sort of a problem here, I have a host, that i bought a long time ago, which is very shady and a problem. I can't contact them by phone or by email, or cancel my order, they already took the yearly pay, and although they are a pretty decent host, its slow and has bad PHP settings. in their PHP.INI they have sess.transid which means trans Session Ids, meaning every link will have a string attached with session id: PHPSESSID=34f634x93e45640ff12

The session IDs are a pain because, I look at my tracking stats, of the Google Bot and it continues to record the PHPSessID, i dont know if this is normal but combined with msnbot and yahoo, i have been "tracked" by 3 bots 1000 times in a matter of 3 weeks. Maybe sessionIds cause this?

Also i check my hit statistics for specific keywords being searched in google, that get me hits, for example, someone searched this keyword:
"XMLHttpObject" and according to my stats im suppose to be on first page. And it says they went to my website from here, but then i go to the page and im not there. I look at the general statistics and see that: Whenever the user lands a hit on a PHPSESSID page of mine, i look at google at the exact referring link they come from, and im not listed!!! However, whenever its a hit without the PHPSESSID, it shows im on the first page etc.

This could mean that i could be #1-#10 in like 50 more keywords, but the google removes it because i have the PHPSESSID and thinks im a spammer.

What i've tried:
use ini_set('sess.trans_id', '0'); in my index file, of my site, so every page is supose to be rid of this trans id, but i dont think ini_set works well with this type of setting.

What i haven't tried:
URL Rewrite Engine in .htaccess - i dunno the disadvantages, or how to do this to get rid of session Ids.
Change Host - This is out of the question, because i payed for the whole year, and also they own my domain and auto-renew it. And i don't exactly want to get a new host, as it would make it hard for me to re-rank in google.


Any help would be appreciated.. Thoughts and comments appreciated.

Does anyone know how to do URLrewrite, or do i even have to worry about it ? Perhaps google won't care? Is there something I can do to get rid of the host without loosing my domain?

The quick and dirty method is to just write into your script to not assign session id's to search engines, or even guests (if it is not neccesary for guests to have session id's.).

I would use mod_rewrite and change everything to .html
What is your site a forum software? or your own ?

I cant really help further not knowing what you are running

i run my own custom designed/coded site. designplanet.biz and the PHPSESSID is caused by my host. repub i dont know what you mean, since i can't control the phpsessid... or dont know how.
Also i dont kno0w how to use url mod rewrite engine very well either.

Im running PHP 4... i dunno what further information you need.

I'll try and research mod rewrite, but any help is appreciated.

Ok i found something and recoded it to work for session IDs:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^\&PHPSESSID\=([^&]+)$
RewriteRule ^$ / [R=301,L]

Im hoping this will work. I'll try it!
Also is there some ways, to improve SEO, by perhaps using this URL rewrite to make my dynamic pages into static looking with .htm extension and full of keywords? Any ideas?

I noticed that this website, this forum, uses a program to do this, so they have a nice document full of the title keyword like this : 40334-session-ids-google.html

I understand how to do this rewrite now, but how does this program get the title of the page and use rewrite to fix it?

EDIT: The above does not work very well, i may have wrote something wrong.

I tried this too:
RewriteRule ^\&PHPSESSID\=([^&]+)$ [R=301,L]

But it doesnt delete the PHPSESSID. Atleast i dont think it does, im not sure.

Try adding

php_value session.use_trans_sid 0

To your htaccess

one point. why does your host own your domain name??

If you coded this script and have no clue how to control the session id then you have a bit more learning to do.

Instead of starting a session for every new user make a conditional statement within your session assigning routine to check whether the referrer is Google or not, if it is, simply do not assign a session to it.

a very cheap deal. I bought it years ago, and it was 50$ for whole year, 12GB bandwidth (i think that might be low now, but i dunno), 500 MB space, PHP 4, Free Domain + autorenew (thats why they own it), unlimited sub + emails... it was quite good for its time a few years ago. But now the company has become a ghost company, they dont answer phone, i cant email them, there is no cancel button on their website superuser.net ... I dunno what to do. I'm wondering if i even cancel my credit card would they get rid of my domain (expire it?), then maybe when it expires i can get it?
Ah well thats another story.

php_value session.use_trans_sid 0 ill try this, but i already tried this with ini_set, with no success. (works sometimes and sometimes doesn't).

Anyone know how to fix my htaccess code? Because i think it should work i dunno.

EDIT: Repub, i think you have a lot more learning to do. My sessions use cookies, it has nothing to do with sessions, its a PHP.ini setting that causes PHPSESSID=35326363 strings at the end of EVERY link, has nothing to do with whether im in a session or not. The code i made was by looking at examples, but im not sure if it's working.

php_value session.use_trans_sid 0

in htaccess should fix it.

Besides you havent even shown us the URLS so its a guessing game for us

just take a look: http://www.designplanet.biz sometimes you will see it on every link on the menu, sometimes you won't.

ummm i did the php_value thing, and although i dont se any PHPSESSIDs, i recorded msnbot today still saw a PHPSESSID.... i dunno how. And many times too.

Can anyone help me with the rewrite engine?

I used php_value session.use_trans_sid 0 in my .htaccess file and no more PHPSESS id's. I also just let anyone have a session but the variables are only assigned when I need the session variables to be saved from page to page(when a priveleged user is on my site).

I know, i never see it anymore, but the MSNbot DOES!
Anyway i fixed the rewrite stuff. http://www.designplanet.biz check it out.

Googlebot seems to have understood not sure.