[thesite] Re: [thelist] Search engines and dynamic sites using query strings

[Oliver Lineham]

At 09:43 1/02/2001 -0600, you wrote:

[404 header from evolt]
>but for browsers other than wack combos of IE and windows, it isn't a problem.

if evolt.org is sending 404 headers, that causes big problems for search 
engine indexing.  search engines generally refuse to index pages that give 
404 headers - they delete the URL from the index, in fact.

we've been running the new site long enough that altavista *should* by now 
be indexing articles with the new URLs.


<wrap>
http://www.altavista.com/cgi-bin/query?q=%2Bhost%3Aevolt.org+-host%3Alists&k 
l=XX&pg=q&Translate=on
</wrap>

list shows all AV indexed pages on evolt.org (not counting 
lists.evolt.org). it totals 8 pages, none of which have the new URL scheme.


i also can't find any new-URL pages indexed by www.google.com:
<wrap>
http://www.google.com/search?q=evolt+site%3Aevolt.org+-site%3Alists.evolt.or 
g&hl=en&lr=&safe=off
</wrap>

lists 46 pages, none of which are the new-URL scheme. notice that almost 
all of them show the page title as "Update your bookmarks! - evolt.org" yet 
the new pages aren't indexed. so the crawler has been here at least.


returning a 404 header completely negates the SE benefits of a 
query-string-less URL scheme.

:(

</ol>

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