dynamic to static url change-.htm better than .asp?

Page.htm vs. page.asp. -- Does Google treat the same.

[JamieBear]

Downstream, we are looking at changing our dynamic URL's to static. Normally we'd make them .asp.

But would Google look upon them more favorably if they were .htm? Would Google index them faster?

Or would a rose by any other name still smell as sweet (i.e. no difference, either way)?

Thanks much.

[farum21]

It's not really the type of page that makes a huge difference, it's when there is a query string appended that google and other SE's will not follow the link.

home.asp = OK
home.asp?sid=11&page=blah... = not so good

The reason SE's dont search many pages with query strings is because they are dynamic pages and hence being dynamic have a tendency to change often so what's the point in indexing a page that just might as well be changed in a day or so. Also dynamic pages take up a bit more server resources so google is afraid they will crash some servers.

Now, I'm not saying dont use .asp or any other server side scripting language in favour of html because I believe the benifits of having the power of dynamic processing outweighs the pains it takes to update 100+ static pages. The question is: can you have your cake and still get it pick up search engines?

If your lucky enough to use php and and apache you can use mod_rewrite to change home.asp?sid=444 into home.asp/sid/444. But it requires an install on your webserver and some minor code modifications.

Good luck :)

[edited by: Woz at 10:29 pm (utc) on Nov. 15, 2004]
[edit reason] Tidying up. [/edit]

[jaffstar]

I had a site that was coded in .ASP without?, it was never getting indexed, until I converted all the pages to static html.

I tried staticshell, but the site looks like a mess.

[JamieBear]

Much appreciated - thanks, farum21 and jaffstar.

[andyll]

I don't think it really is much of a problem these days.

You just have to be careful about the names of the parameters you are passing in.

I have a brand new site that has 36 different products and the detail pages are 1 ASP page. The format is:

www.example.com/widgetreview.asp?widget=productsku

Google had all 36 indexed within weeks.

I do websites for book sellers and the format of the pages are:

www.example.com/products.asp?category=History
and
www.example.com/reviews.asp?isbn=#*$!#*$!#*$!x

Google has had no problems picking them up.

In fact... by naming my parameters this way I am getting more keywords into the URL.

Andy

[edited by: Xoc at 6:44 pm (utc) on Nov. 15, 2004]
[edit reason] changed to use example.com [/edit]