[thelist] Search engines and dynamic content

[Marcia Welter]

>some other hack to get indexed. If most of the major engines have no
problem

Most don't, and ones that do don't generally won't. mod_rewrite is a
solution in some cases if the module is installed (which I'm told isn't on
Alabanza boxes). WebmasterWorld has loads of info on mod_rewrite and dealing
with dynamic sites for search engine placement. Lotsa geeks, but I'm not one
of them so I've had to really struggle with anythig dynamic.

I'm doing SEO work on a site now that's all dynamic without mod_rewrite
available. It's all dynamic with a mickey-mouse shopping cart except for the
homepage and one or two others, and NOTHING is indexed except the index page
and one other. I'm making up crawlable HTML pages with optimized relevant
text. Problem is with that cart, if they click on what's supposed to be a
static HTML page it'll come out with another URL. First thing I did was get
in and exclude ALL bots from the directory containing the cart that
everything now links into and just put up links to my pages that link to
where they're supposed go, because if duplicate pages are picked up the
client's site is toast.

There may be different or better solutions, but rewriting them server side
to static pages without long strings with special characters is a quick fix.
Theoretically, however, shorter URLs have an advantage. In my case I'm not
the designer of that site or it wouldn't be that way, so I'm having
indexable content set up and keeping bots out of the rest altogether.

Marcia

> -----Original Message-----
> From: thelist-admin at lists.evolt.org
> [mailto:thelist-admin at lists.evolt.org]On Behalf Of Tony Grimes
> Sent: Wednesday, April 10, 2002 3:45 PM
> To: thelist at lists.evolt.org
> Subject: [thelist] Search engines and dynamic content
>
>
>
>      Does anyone know which search engines can index a dynamically
> driven site? We've got a site using PHP/Postgres/Apache/FreeBSD and
> we need to know if it's worth setting up virtual directories or some other
> hack to get indexed. If most of the major engines have no problem with
> dynamic content or are well on their way, we wouldn't mind saving
> ourselves a little time and heartache.
>      I notice the evolt site is optimized for indexing, but the only
> threads I could find on the subject are over a year old. Anyone have an
> update? If it turns out that this IS neccessary, I'd love to get some
> links to the needed resources. TIA.
>
>
> Tony Grimes
> Online Director
> Movie Poster Shop
> Web: www.moviepostershop.com
>
> --
> For unsubscribe and other options, including
> the Tip Harvester and archive of thelist go to:
> http://lists.evolt.org Workers of the Web, evolt !