What We Learned About Googlebot and Cookies

Does googlebot accept cookies? A widely accepted belief in the SEO community is that Googlebot does not accept cookies. However, during an in-depth analysis of a large-scale website, we uncovered evidence that challenges this assumption. This discovery led us to a rigorous verification process to determine whether Googlebot does, in fact, accept cookies—and if so, under what conditions. Here’s what we learned.

The Challenge: Unexplained Indexing of Broken URLs

While analyzing a large-scale website (90M+ pages), we consistently encountered links to broken URLs in both the Google Index Report and the Botify log system. These URLs were invisible in our standard crawls, and their origin remained unknown. The client’s DevOps team repeatedly questioned how we were discovering these URLs and where they were coming from, but log data only confirmed that Googlebot had picked them up—without revealing how.

Initially, we hypothesized that these links were sourced from external backlinks, possibly even as part of a negative SEO campaign. The scale was substantial, accumulating hundreds of thousands of crawl requests per month. Yet, we couldn’t pinpoint a definitive source.

The Discovery: Googlebot Accessing a Cookie-Gated Environment

A breakthrough came when we performed a simple Google search that unexpectedly revealed the origin of these URLs: they were being indexed from the client’s Canary environment—a testing environment accessible only via cookies. The website contained a text-based indicator for internal debugging, showing which environment was active. Running a site: and intext: search query confirmed that pages from the Canary environment were indeed being indexed.

This raised a critical question: How was Googlebot accessing an environment gated by cookies, when the prevailing consensus was that Googlebot does not accept cookies?

The Verification Process: Confirming Googlebot’s Cookie Behaviour

To test this anomaly, we used Screaming Frog’s custom extraction feature to pull the same text indicator found in our search query. Our findings confirmed that while most requests returned the Production environment, some crawl requests revealed the Canary version.

By this point, we were puzzled. Searching for answers on Google yielded little insight—most sources definitively stated that Googlebot does not accept cookies. Determined to find concrete evidence, we expanded our research. We found discussions dating back to 2014 suggesting that Googlebot might process cookies under certain conditions. Additionally, a 2024 Google Help Center comment supported our findings.

To validate our discovery further, we turned to Google Search Console’s ‘URL Inspect Tool.’ We tested multiple random pages, analyzing the rendered HTML that Googlebot fetched. After several attempts, we found definitive proof: Googlebot accepts cookies and can retrieve content served through them.

What We Learned

• Googlebot does accept cookies—likely since 2014.
• Cookies are accepted on a session-only basis, meaning they are processed during page load but not stored beyond that.
• This has significant implications for indexing and content personalization. If cookies control content visibility, Googlebot may index content that was not intended for public access, potentially leading to unintended SEO consequences.

Implications for SEO and Web Management

The ability of Googlebot to accept cookies, even temporarily, challenges conventional assumptions about indexing behavior. Websites using cookies to control access, serve alternate content, or personalize experiences should be aware that Googlebot may index variations that were not intended for discovery. This underscores the importance of properly managing cookie-based content visibility to prevent accidental exposure of sensitive or test-environment pages.

Understanding how Googlebot interacts with cookies is essential for ensuring that your site’s indexing aligns with your intended structure and security policies.