Question about ASP.NET

ASP.NET Rankings?

[ritalia]

We are pretty much trying to get the hang of SEO and start using it internally to boost results, but we were not sure if some languages have a disadvantage vs. others. We would like to use ASP.NET for most of our sites, but not if its going to affect our search engine status. Could anyone help me out in answering this.

[pageoneresults]

Hello ritalia, I moved this topic from Search Engine Promotion over here to the .NET forum as I believe it will garner more attention.

I too would like to hear others experiences so far with ASP.NET and working with the wild four letter file extensions.

In addition to that, some of the ASP.NET code is proprietary and therefore does not validate. I've been trying to stay away but it looks like I have to bite the bullet and learn the MS way. It looks like pretty powerful stuff. But, I do see a steep learning curve for us html purists. ;)

[gsmith]

I'm also new to this, but from what I have learned from other WebmasterWorld discussions is that the main issue with ASP.NET is the tendency to rely on using complex URLs with long query strings. The variables contained in the query strings trigger (on the server) database queries based on those variables. On the server side only a relatively few .aspx pages exist. This saves much development effort, but makes "life" complicated for the search engine robot. The answer is query string rewriting, as explained in "URL Rewriting in ASP.NET" in the MSDN library.

[duckhunter]

the 4 letter extension has no effect from what I have seen.

[Xmlx]

I'm an ASP.NET developer, and I've also programmed with PHP, ColdFusion and a few other server-side languages.

As far as Search Engines go, there is no difference between ASP.NET and any other dynamic server-side page processing (PHP, ColdFusion, etc...).

Whether a dynamic webpage is read from a Search Engine crawl or requested from someone's browser - the intended/finished results of that webpage are the same.

If its not, than that's the programmers fault - not your choice of platform or language.

The problem, if any, is the extra search arguments (which some call variables) in the URL (after the question-mark?).

Some Search Engines interpret and follow them fine - some don't.

ASP.NET is no different here than any other language, like PHP in this respect. Because the use, number and purpose of those search arguments are determined by the programmer - not the language.

You can build your web application (ASP.NET, PHP, etc...) with one page which handles many arguments, or you can build it with hundreds of pages and no arguments - it's a design decision.

By the way, from my experience, Google doesn't typically have problems with search arguments in a URL and so will follow them.

But because of the dynamic/unlimited nature of these kinds of URLs, if anything, I notice that Google will limit how many of these URL to follow at a time - but eventually it will get around to all of them.

Simple URLs are best, but if you need search arguments - that still works too.

Hope this helps.....

[tomasz]

I have a database driven ASP.Net site and most of my pages (90%)are htm so Google can index them quickly,
In global.asax use rewritepath and u can have all you pages with htm extension

Sub Application_BeginRequest(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As EventArgs)

.....
fakepath="1234-77450.htm"

newpath = "widget.aspx?zip=" + zip + "&widgetID=" + id
context.RewritePath(newpath)

...
End Sub