Search engines and cookies

Hi, Do you guys how search engines like cookies? One site I'm working on now requires the user to select which region he/she is from on the start page. That value is stored in a cookie. So without cookies you can't get past the start page. Does this leave the search engines at the start page? Right now google only index the start pages on my site and I'm trying to figure out why. If I can't use cookies, how would you force users to select a region but letting the search engine spiders in on the site somehow? Hope this wasn't too off topic. Kind Regards Emil