Can googlebot follow dynamic URLs from a site map?

[djtaverner]

I have a large dynamically generated site. I am trying to improve its visibility to google.

If I create a links page/ site map to all dynamically generated internal pages will google follow these links E.G:

<a href = "http://www.buyitat.com/index.php?action=displaycat&catid=16&customheader=custom-header16">Crazy Title</a>

To reiterate:
Can googlebot follow links on a static html page to dynamic php pages?

Also:

What url rewrite options are there apart from apache mod_rewrite?

cheers
Dave Tav

[Ledfish]

Dave

The answer is....it may it may not. My experience with dynamic urls was frustrating at best until I started rewriting mine. Now most are slowly getting spidered and indexed, so I can at least be less frustrated by seeing some progress.

Besides Mod Rewrite for apache, there are also ISAPI Rewrite programs for Windows. I would imagine there are a few others for some of the more common but less popular server operating systems.

[dirkz]

> can googlebot follow links on a static html page to dynamic php pages?

Of course it can. But But it depends ...

By the way, it shouldn't make a difference whether you link to your dynamic pages from a static page or a dynamic one. Googlebot is just cautious about dynamically generated pages.

> What url rewrite options are there apart from apache mod_rewrite?

Which server are you using?

[g1smd]

Make sure that all of the & in the source code are actually done as &amp; instead.

You need this to stop the browser trying to display entities that do not exist.

Yes, it will work, the browser will escape it correctly and send the correct thing to the server.

[killroy]

you can avoid the dreaded? cahracter completely without any rewriting by using the standard PATH_INFO environment variable instead of QUERY_STRING

domain.com/script.ext/some_stuffwith/orwithoutslashesbut=symbols

everything after script.ext will be in the PATH_INFO environment variable. Use it like a QUERY_STRING if you like with name value pairs. SEs cannot treat it specially because they cannot possible distinguish this usage of a script from the case where script.ext is actually a folder on the server.

SN

[a_chameleon]

I work with two sites loaded with dynamic pages; Google indexes them regularly and almost all are cacghed for the site in G. The link source is

<A HREF="product_detail.asp?subcatID=2">

and I know very little about SQL but am told this is a standard querystring.

[lazurus]

Hi djtaverner

I don't think Google will have any problems with this. However, the only *proof* will be time. Simply wait until google spiders the static page then do a search for some specific text.