to asp or not to asp, that is my question

Do .asp pages get indexed?

[giggle]

Hi there

I have a commercial site that has various sub pages by country.

I made them .asp pages so that I could centrally control various aspects of them without having to go into each one seperately.

The links from the home page are like http://www.homepage.com/american_car_hire.asp

Will Google be able to index them? I read on their site that they have problems with dynamically generated pages - does this mean any .asp page?

Great threads in here, wish I had found this site ages ago.

Cheers

[Beach]

Yes they do - google also indexes the query too - details.asp?productID=1

If you build your site correctly you can get google to index your whole database.

[chris_f]

Giggle,

The file extention .asp is not the problem. Google can crawl .asp files without any problems. The problem (although it's not a problem its a function) occurs with dynamic pages that use query strings (? in the url). Google will crawl a page with a querystring url as long as it is linked to by a page without a querystring. Google will not follow links on a page that has a querystring.

Chris.

[giggle]

Thanks guys.

No querystrings this time (there were in the last incarnation and they didn't get indexed).

I think that I'll wait patientially and see if they magically appear after the next dance.

All the best.

[Woz]

>Google will not follow links on a page that has a querystring.

Beg to Differ. I have examples but cannot post them as they are on my sites.

Onya
Woz

[brotherhood of LAN]

>query string

I too use ASP and dont have a prob in regards to google indexing them. However, from what ive seen when the bot is spidering, it will leave them to last indicating that google has to compensate in some way.

I doubt they penalise "?" in the URL in any way.

[DaveN]

Woz is right

Googles line is there is a limit to how many - so not to bring down your servers.

The big question still unanswered is HOW Many.

DaveN

(edited by: DaveN at 10:44 am (utc) on May 23, 2002)

[topr8]

>Google will not follow links on a page that has a querystring.

Beg to Differ. I have examples but cannot post them as they are on my sites.

ditto

[Beach]

A clients site has had every product index with the query string "?" and they are coming out number 1 in the SERP for their keywords.

The site has been live for 3 months and has always been deeply indexed by googlebot on every update.

[chris_f]

I had this arguement with hutchins13 on this very site. I originally had your stance. However, he converted me as we could not find any sites that disprove this theory. Please if someone can, feel free to sticky me the url's and I'll have a look.

Chris

[DaveN]

chris_f

check your sticky ;)

DaveN

[chris_f]

Check you sticky. The theory is not disproved yet.

[chris_f]

Nice one Woz :). You may have beaten me. Give me a while though.

[Beach]

http://www.google.com/search?q=webcam+hayling+island

[chris_f]

hutchins13, I'd appreciate some help if your reading this. The theory may be beaten by Woz. Your the expert.

[chris_f]

Even better. GoogleGuy 'You have the power' to put us out of our misery ;)

[chris_f]

Beach, Your link can be reached from the home page which has no querystring in the url.

Woz, you are still the only contender.

[chris_f]

TopR8, you are a contender as well :).

[Beach]

Emmm...

[brotherhood of LAN]

Woz (thanks) has a few links to my site on his profile URL (if its still there). Its to a dictionary. The dictionary is one page.

on some subpages, there are links to specific terms (as opposed to using a search box) which uses a query string. Thankfully, like others, some of em actually do rank high......

they are technical "niche" sorta terms....but only with a few sentences about each term stuck within the page template. There is more "duplicated content" than unique content due to the small description of each term in the dictionary. Regardless...google lists them, and rightly so.

From my dim view of how google works, they seem to understand the way in which webmasters use dynamically served pages....i wish the others would catch up!

[chris_f]

>> Emmm...

Read above. Your site did not disprove the theory.

[Beach]

Yes your right..

I'm going to do a bit more homework!!

[korkus2000]

This has been brought up a lot. I have been spidered 3 levels deep with dynamic querystrings. I think you need to look if something else like session is being passed that won't allow googlebot to spider that same URL again. I think it isn't a querystring problem but a programming problem.

[chris_f]

korkus2000,

You could be right. Infact that could explain alot. Hhhhmmmm ... rethinking.

I'll check on the sites I have been sent so far. I do think you could be right korkus2000.

_{I wouldn't like to shorten your username korkus2000.}

I think I'll test when I next establish a new site.

[indigojo]

we have no problem with dynamic query strings, do a google search on fire resistant steel, we get 1 and 2. These pages have never been linked to from our home page and link back shows no one linking to these articles. Google has deep crawled our site to get to these pages from dynamic site map pages. It has been a slow process though.

[ciml]

Google tell us [google.com] that:

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.

My experience has been that Googlebot is less inclined to follow links from a page links with '?' in the URL, but will do so if the PageRank of the linking page is good.

In other words, deep pages without much PageRank are, in my opinion, less likely to have their links followed if they have a '?'.

[hutchins13]

indigojo: the site your talking about, the one in your profile, uses invisible links from you home page to index pages with static URLs. These pages link to pages with dynamic URLs, so they get indexed.

korkus2000: are you talking about the site in your profile? I haven't figured this one out yet. It appears as though the only way to the band pages is through a genre page with a dynamic url. The problem is that google is not showing the backward links from these band pages. They might be getting indexed because of external links, but since most seem to be indexed, this is probably not the case.

Woz and TopR8: I would like to checkout your sites. I still think my theory (on following links from pages with dynamic URLs) is correct.

[korkus2000]

There are no links to the band pages except through dynamic urls (including external links). The other tabs are three deep. No backwards links because my pr stinks. The site has only been live for 2 months.

[MHes]

Hi
It seems to me that dynamic pages get indexed, with or without ? However, and this is the important bit, How many times do you see a dynamic asp page do well on a competative key word? Never. If your selling blue elephants... fine. If your selling something competative you have to have a static site.

[korkus2000]

I completely disagree. Dynamic pages just haven't caught on as much as the legacy sites using html. You could say the same thing about xhtml. It is just not being implemented as much. I did a search on google for "sex". #14 was dynamic. I think thats a pretty competitive keyword.

Java jobs #6 dynamic
Buy music #5 dynamic
buy #9 and #10 dynamic
sale #19 dynamic
Blouse #9 dynamic
news #5 dynamic