Id?=something

[escaped_light]

I'm trying to move myself up in Google (who isn't ). I did a search for my page and currently only the main splash page shows up, which is a great start, but I want all of my pages to be indexed, because of substantially different content to each. First of all, does Google actually use Meta tags? I heard that they completely ignore them (well, desc. & Keywords), and rely everything on the spider algorithms.

 

My page works by using the ID in the URL to load in the content of the page, and do other specifics with PHP to write the page so it matches the section (Title, non-working mouseovers, etc.), but the whole structure stems from one PHP file.

 

Does Google(and other search engines) see the URL tailed by the unique ?id=something as completely independent pages? or does it know that there only exists the one PHP page that dynamically loads in the different content?

 

My other question is regarding internal links. I've written all of my links without the whole URL, and opted for the link being like: <a href="?id=main">. Does this confuse Google(and again, other search engines), and should I actually have the full URL in there instead?

 

Thanks,

 

Robert

[surefire]

There are a variety of opinions on this (as everything... right?) but here's mine... and I've researched it quite a bit!

 

Does Google index pages with dynmaic urls (www.yoursite.com/index.php?var=1&blah=blah&etc=1)... yes.

 

Does Google rank static (and static appearing pages) better... yes.

 

You can make your pages look static with just a little knowledge and some recoding. Now, it's a lot easier if you wrote the pages... because you know where to look.

 

If you are trying to recode someone else's code, and it's a big one, then you're in for a lot of sleepless nights... it's not easy.

 

Do a search on mod rewrite and also 'force type'

 

Both methods work great.

 

Here's another hint... download Gallery, the script, and look at the htaccess file that creates the search engine friendly urls... good stuff there. They use modrewrite to pass the variables straight out of the url before the script is even executed and the rewrite the urls.

 

Very cool.

[BluegrassGardener]

I do know that google DEFINITELY uses description tags, keywords I am unaware.

[SEO]

Does Google index pages with dynmaic urls (www.yoursite.com/index.php?var=1&blah=blah&etc=1)... yes.

 

Does Google rank static (and static appearing pages) better... yes.

Concur, as time goes on better and better incorporation of dynamics.

 

I do know that google DEFINITELY uses description tags, keywords I am unaware.

Concur with regard to description tags (you can convince yourself by looking at indexed sites with decent PageRank... the description is used in the SERPs (search engine ranking pages). Keyword tag is not important with Google; however, do not disregard them in that they are used by others and 'others' do play a role (albeit small, but you never know about the future [especially these days]).

[escaped_light]

Whoa! Time to take out the Extra-Strength Advil!

 

Keyword tag is not important with Google; however, do not disregard them in that they are used by others and 'others' do play a role (albeit small, but you never know about the future [especially these days]).

 

Oh for sure. I'm gonna focus on Google for the time being, and then move from that to all other search engines. I wish I was advanced enough to just make it all right the first time, but alas, I've got a lot to learn.

 

Your pages are dynamically generated. We are able to index dynamically generated pages. However, because our web crawler can easily overwhelm and crash sites serving dynamic content, we limit the amount of dynamic pages we index.

Google Info for Webmasters

 

So, it looks like a toss up. I'm noticing more and more Dynamic URLs in my search results, but there is still a lot of information that isn't being indexed.

 

I've been reading about the rewrite mod on the Apache website, but I'm afraid that it quite a bit over my head, but I think I'm starting to get a grasp on the principle of it. Here is what I think I've figured out:

 

TCH server gets a request for http://www.robflavored.com, the mod-rewrite takes this URL, and sends the information from the absolute location on the server http://www.robflavored.com/public_html/index.html, and makes sure to send the index.html file. But the visitor to my site will never see the public_html part of the URL.

 

Now, if I were to use the mod-rewrite to give "false" static URLs in place of Dynamic URLs, I would basically set the condition to take the URL that is requested by the visitor (ie. http://www.robflavored.com/links.htm) and instead send the Dynamic URL in place of that (ie. http://www.roblfavored.com/index.php?id=links). So the information or file sent to the visitor is actuall index.html?id=links, but no matter what their (and Google) sees the URL as being a static URL, and therefore will index it.

 

That's how I perceive the information that I have read about the mod_rewrite. I am going to try and find a dumbed down version of what Apache has, and see what I can find out, but I thought I'd post this here in case I can't find anything. If I am right in understanding how it works, than I will take the next step in learning how to use the mod_rewrite. My other question would be whether or not I am at all able to even do anything with mod_rewrite as a TCH user, simply because I am (of course) on a shared server. I don't want to learn all of this, and then find out that it won't even help me. (although, it would still be good to know I suppose).

 

Thanks guys,

 

Robert

[escaped_light]

I think I may have come up with a much much easier solution than screwing around with the mod_rewrite . I was reading that an error when using it could drive the server load up to 100%, something I don't wanna be responsible for, and I'm not advanced enough to be messing around with it I don't think.

 

Now, from Google's site, they don't give a rat's *ss about extentions, it's only when they hit a stop in the URL that they stop digging in most cases. So, this is what I've come up with, and it should fool Google I think (or hope):

 

I copy the following file for all of my sub-pages, and just change the $id variable. I name each file with the appropriate name. In this case, links.php.

 

><?php $id="links";
include("index.php");
?>

 

That's all the file would contain, and it wouldn't require too much changing to my site structure or code, plus the page appears as it should without the ?id=links part which Google would ignore. However, I would like to make the file a .htm/html file, but I'm not sure how I would do that, and still initialize the PHP server side, so that it generates the file. But the PHP extension shouldn't be a problem I don't think, and it might just be easier to keep them as PHP because the filename doesn't show up in the Address.

 

It seems like an easy solution to a complicated problem, but I am sure that there is bound to be some downside to it.

 

Robert