Welding method

A welding method for materially cohesively bonding at least two components using at least one additive material, wherein a welding seam consisting of the at least one additive material is produced with a specified seam course between a seam start and a seam end, wherein the process of producing the welding seam is controlled by at least one control unit wherein at least one detectable external physical welding seam property of the welding seam is influenced by at least one control parameter of the control unit, characterized in that an information is included in the at least one control parameter, said information during the process of producing the welding seam being stored in the welding seam between an information start point and an information end point in the seam course using the at least one detectable external physical welding seam property so that the information can be read, preferably optically and/or haptically, from a sequence of the at least one detectable external physical welding seam property along the seam course in the region between the information start point and the information end point, wherein during the process of producing the welding seam, the at least one control parameter is varied in order to change the at least one detectable external physical welding seam property in the seam course between the information start point and the information end point, wherein different forms of the at least one external physical welding seam property are assigned to code letters of a code alphabet and the information is stored as a combination of the code letters of the code alphabet.