session IDs not enabled, no effect with Google

A site built around dynamic URLs not getting indexed

[Kino]

I know that this topic has been covered extensively, however I have a new bent on the subject of dynamic URLs.

We've built a store catalogue that generates the links for the store items dynamically. However, no session ID is enabled until AFTER you have added an item to your shopping cart.

e.g.

http://www.example.com/category.php?ProductCode=XX&cartid=

Once a visitor physically enters a cart item, then the session tracking URL is updated -

http://www.example.com/category.php?ProductCode=XX&cartid=024088196c74b124

Question: Shouldn't Google be able to spider the first set of links, provided they are hard coded in a page directory or sitemap? After some early tests it appears that this part of the URL is the problem - "&cartid=".

As an experiment I changed the phrase "cartid" to "page" to see if Google will change its mind and spider the links. I'm still waiting to view the results.

This has been a one year trial and error session to make this work, so far with not much success.

Please start with the assumption that we are going to be using dynamic URLs, minus session IDs. If I could get some insights from the fine contributors to this forum that would be much appreciated.

Cheers,

K

[edited by: tedster at 10:57 pm (utc) on Jan. 26, 2004]
[edit reason] to use example.com [/edit]

[rogerd]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld, Kino.

Your dynamic URLs should get spidered, particularly if they are hard-linked and don't have Session IDs. They may not do quite as well as clean static URLs, but that's not the issue.

How's the overall PR of a site? It seems that on low PR sites, dynamic URLs may get low priority for spidering.

[Birdman]

Are you using a form for your Add to Cart buttons or a standard <a href> type link?

[shasan]

How long has it been since you first got crawled? I think you should adopt a wait-and-see attitude before you go doing anything drastic.

Sounds like you're doing all the right things.

[Kino]

An answer to a few of the questions (thanks for your help).

The site is www.example.com. Overall, quite a successful online store (written up in Wall Street Journal fashion section last December). We spent a fair bit on PPC before Christmas, but the spidering is an issue for the long term.

Site was launched in Dec. 2002, so it's been around a while. The PR is 4 for the home page, 3 for some of the internal pages. It spiked up to 5 in December, then back down.

The URLs on most pages are coded like this:

www.example.com/women.php?cartid=<?php echo $cartid;?>

The result is that the URLs appear like this (until you add something to your cart):

www.example.com/women.php?cartid=

Right now we have only 5 pages indexed on Google (32 on AlltheWeb.com, including many "dynamic" links). Pretty sad results. The only catalogue page that was spidered off the home page is a hard-coded link off an image.

I hope this helps. Is the poor indexing from the way the URLs are coded? From the low PR? The use of "cartid"? Or none of the above?

Thanks again.

K

[edited by: ciml at 10:25 am (utc) on Jan. 27, 2004]
[edit reason] Examplified domains. [/edit]