Topic awaiting preservation: Quick dynamic page/search question

Hiyas all, a quick question hope you can help me out. I know some search engines have trouble and ignore things when they get to dynamic links like site.php?m1=wohoo etc etc..

Now if i had a static page with say 4 links on them

link1.htm
link2.php?m1=yikes
link3.htm
link4.htm
etc

For a search engine that didnt like dynamic pages, on this page would it

a)Crawl through link1.htm, get to link2.php?m1=yikes and stop crawling the current page all together, not going to link3 or link4.

OR

b)Crawl through link1.htm, get to link2.php?m1=yikes and ignore that link not following it through, but then continue to crawl through the rest of the static links, i.e link3, then link4?

I'm not sure how they work, appreciate any help.

Well, of course I don't know a first thing about their internals,
but I'd guess on option b), after all, they want to index stuff, and not ignore it.

It's questions like this that make me really look forward to the tutorial that Emperor has brewing in the back of his mind on mod_rewrite. I know he has gone to great pains over at the GN to make sure the URLs are search engine friendly, and it took me a little while to understand exactly how it works (I'm kinda slow that way anyway) but I?ll give explaining it a shot anyway.

H][RO

If your very concerned about your whole site being spidered by the search engines, and your on an Apache server, you may want to look into mod_rewrite. It basically puts a layer in between your script and the URL in the browser. Your script wants to see:

link2.php?m1=yikes

but the spiders won't follow that. The spiders want to see something like:

link2.php/yikes/

but your script can't deal with that. This is where mod_rewrite comes in. It sits between the URL and your script and translates the URL link2.php/yikes/ into link2.php?m1=yikes for your script and everybody's happy!

I know this has been a simplistic view of the whole mod_rewrite process, but I'm sure if your interested that some of our more learned members would be able to help you further. I just wanted to throw it out there for you to consider.


[edit] Fat fingers [/edit]

-Butcher-

[This message has been edited by butcher (edited 02-06-2003).]

butcher: Thanks for the vote of confidence - I do hope it can live up to expectations

H][RO: It is actually more complex than that some browsers do option b) but some (like Google) also do:

c) Follow the first dynamic link but don't follow an subsequent ones from there. I'm not sure if you are actually looking for help or if it is just a general question. If you want to make your links more friendly (both for users and for robots) then drop us more information (server, language, examples, etc.) and we'll see what we can do for you

[edit and see also:

:FAQ:

how could I forget that?? ]

___________________
Emps

FAQs: Emperor

Just a note

link2 will still be crawled just without the query string stuff attached.



.:[ Never resist a perfect moment ]:.

I think the best place to find search engine optimization info is at the forums of http://www.webmasterworld.com

Lot's o' cool stuff there.

Yeh i have looked into that mod_rewrite a bit butcher,emps but decided i didnt want to do that just yet..

I guess emp i just wanted to make sure my links would be followed through, im not too fussed if it doesnt follow the dynamic ones through as long as it doesnt stop at the first dynamic link and not do the static ones.

the page i'm doing is here:
Here

As you can see on the menu, the first link "Home" is php, then a few static ones then a php "Products" then the rest static. I'm just hoping that the search engines arent going to ignore the static ones and stop at Home because it is dynamic.



[This message has been edited by H][RO (edited 02-07-2003).]