How can I prevent session IDs from being automatically appended to links on my PHP website, specifically for spiders and bots?

Session IDs are automatically appended to links on a PHP website when using session_start() function. To prevent this for spiders and bots, you can check the user agent and only append the session ID for regular users. This can be achieved by checking the $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] variable and conditionally appending the session ID based on the user agent. 

<?php
session_start();

if (strpos($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'], 'bot') === false) {
    // Append session ID only for regular users
    $link = 'example.com/page.php?' . session_name() . '=' . session_id();
} else {
    // Do not append session ID for bots
    $link = 'example.com/page.php';
}

echo '<a href="' . $link . '">Link</a>';
?>

Keywords

PHP session IDs URL rewriting spiders bots

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