Do spiders carry cookies from one page to the next?

I did a search and couldn't find anything on this.

When a search engine spider hits a page and goes to another page, does it hang onto a cookie it got from the first page.

I want the user to keep the cookie so that I can display links pertaining to what they're interested in. However, I don't want the spider to see the links on the 2nd page because they may not be relevant to the content on that page.

Chris.

I believe the answer is that the googlebot and yahoobot do not carry cookies based on this link...

http://www.highrankings.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=12229

Can anyone verify that?

Chris.

I am not sure of the answer to that.

A while ago I would have said no but given the recent improvements witht he bot being largely based on Mozilla browser technology I would be inclined to lean towards yes.

That being said I would advise you not use cookies but use Session IDs in the document header (not in the URL) and use session tracking instead.

Many users have Cookies disabled due to security requirements. The penetration of cookies is not a very high percentage.