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We couln't use the rewrite option as our host didn't offer it so we did html static pages and banned crawlers from the DB for safety.
1) Will Google be able to crawl it now.
2) If so how should we convert back. Should we use 301 redirects for each page pointing to the db string and un ban crawlers.
Ta
If crawlers are banned, they can't crawl, and can't index, including Googlebot.
If you now want them to crawl the best course is use the robots text to allow only the crawlers you wish.
You will need to submit on completion, if you tell Googlebot not to bother your entire site, it will likely not come back uninvited.
The URL string looks fine to me as well.
One other note: assuming this is a private database and you have no inbound links, google will unlikely keep it indexed if it finds the site to be an orphan.
I have pages indexed and ranking well all over Google with urls like [XYZ.com...] .
Google can crawl it.
2) If so how should we convert back.
How are your pages ranking now? How dynamic is your product list? If you only add a product every now and then, I'd just write the new static pages with the nice short URLS. If you're dropping new products into the DB every day, I'd start the conversion process.
I'm assuming you've only banned the bot from the DB. You'll need a redirect if you want to get rid of the static pages and open the database up to bots.
The static pages did very well until this update so what I think I will do, if it is possible, is try allowing ten DB pages and redirecting the corresonding static pages with a 301.
Any other ideas why google wasn't crawling the DB b4 with banned it? Fast did so I don't think it was a stupid obvouis mistake.
