Google and Server Side Includes

Does Google Spider SSI's

[jimh009]

Hello,

I just figured out how to use SSI's in web pages and was wondering if Google is able to spider them - both to index the content and the ability to follow the links that are in the SSI's.

Thanks.

Jim

[Perfection]

Yes.

[PsychoTekk]

the server interprets the SSI stuff and outputs it to users (and bots)
as HTML

[Yidaki]

SSI's are server side - thus included into the page *before* the page gets sent out by the web server. A robot (or any other web client) just receives the final page - including all server side dynamic stuff.

Client side includes (Javascript etc.) is another thing. AFAIK google doesn't parse them.

[dvduval]

When the server processes the include it displays as html on the client side. Googlebot is a client. In other words, when you "view source" on your page, that is what Google also sees (for the most part).

[jamie]

hi jim,

be aware that using ssi makes it impossible to cache your pages, unless you use 'xbithack full'

see this post [webmasterworld.com]

having pages not cacheable means everytime someone sees a page they have to download it (it is not saved in browsers cache), and it might effect how deeply google spiders your site.

read up on web-caching.com [web-caching.com]