Google Technical Guidlines

Content management systems

[biggles]

Google Guy's post Google also says [webmasterworld.com] prompted me to re-read Google's technical guideleins (http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html).

I'm puzzled by the following

If your company buys a content management system, make sure that the system can export your content so that search engine spiders can crawl your site.

I don't understand the bit about "exporting content in a format spiders can crawl". Are Google saying if your CMS generates pages with complex dynamic URLs (as Vignette does) you should also create copies of these pages with static urls so they can be crawled? Or am I missing something?

[andreasfriedrich]

I guess the word export is not to be understood in the strict sense of the word. Your CMS does not need to export the content it provides from the database, assuming you are using a database. That is because Google has no way of checking how you ensure "spiderability" and why would they care anyway.

All Google is suggesting is that your CMS exposes your content in a SE friendly way, i.e. that is uses a SE friendly URL interface, i.e. that it refrains from using too long query strings. How you achieve that is entirely your problem. In any way there is no need for these long query strings.

If you are using a bad CMS which uses long query strings then exporting your content to static html pages is one way to ensure that Google can spider your content. URL rewriting or getting a better CMS or rewriting your current CMS are other options.

HTH Andreas

[biggles]

Thanks for the quick reply Andreas.

[GoogleGuy]

The other main point is that the CMS shouldn't require session-ids. Google is actually pretty great at dynamic urls and getting better, but session ids cause a problem because they expire. Make sure to check for that, too.