?asp site generated urls and searchengines.

advice on steps to ensure spiders search dynamic sites

[chompy]

hi, this is my first post but i have read a lot of useful info. thanks.

i have a new site commissioned to be SE friendly but dynamic. The webdevelopers are haveing trouble with me because the site isn't getting listed, been spidered by google, alta, alltheweb. Only alltheweb has us listed but only if you know our name. it searches 16 pages down to when it hits .resort.asp?id=24 first 6 pages are straight htm the rest generated from the database. Originally it only listed the first 6 html pages until a sitemap was added to the main page. I have been collecting info from as many sources as i can find at it seems they will have to convert the non standard symbols %? etc to / to create a normal looking url.

Is this the only way how easy is this or are there alternatives apart from coding the whole site in html.

Incidently there are javascript calls to open new pages containing the asp.generated pages and drop down menus on the asp. generated pages to call the links to these javascript pages from.

The content of the site is good it is relevant to the site there is no attempt to spam the search engines. But i could do with some info to back up my claim that the site isn't getting list because of the way its written and how to reslove the problem.

Many thanks for any help or pointers.
jules

[ScottM]

Chompy, Welcome to WebmasterWorld.

I'll be honest, your post may be beyond my experience, but I seem to remember someone saying Google has a problem with menus as you describe.

I am certainly open for correction on this...

either way...Welcome:>)

[added]I have seen asp links followed, but only when they've been called out as link on the page itself.[/added]

[shady]

Hi Chompy

I have an ASP site which has suffered with similar problems.
The ASP pages only appear to be indexed down one level, so pages which are not linked from the default page are not indexed.
I'm not sure if your sitemap contains links to all the possible dynamic pages, or simply to the static html pages?

Also, there may be a limitation of the number of links will be followed by a spider on an individual page.

One suggestion (if you are not already doing this with your sitemap), may be to programmatically (using VB for example) create an html index which links to all possible dynamic pages/parameters.

I have used this method on the ASP site, by creating index pages for each letter of the alphabet which lists all the products on my site beginning with the letter. These pages then link to the ASP pages (with parameters) which show these products. I then add an alphabetic link to these pages from the homepage (Products Index: A B C D.......)

Of course, this exact approach may not be suitable for your site, but the basic method may be useful.

Using this method, the spider has a nice fixed html map to follow from the homepage to each of your pages.

Hope this helps!

[chompy]

thanks for the help so far guys.

I can confirm that the site map lists each and every page that is written.
I think the real bug bear maybe the use of the drop down menus on the .asp generated page. This then lists the sites of it which are .asp generated and open in a javescript window.
the site structure is as follows
'main' page html- links to 'resort' page.asp links from here to 10individual resort pageswhich are .asp generated pages eg(../resort/resort.asp?id=18). These pages, have the drop down menu's coded something like this

function jumppage(selectedproduct){

pageopen = "facility/facopen.asp?id="+selectedproduct.options[selectedproduct.selectedIndex].value;
window.open(pageopen,'featureswindow','width=660,height=600')
//window.location.href = "facility/facopen.asp?id="+selectedproduct.options[selectedproduct.selectedIndex].value;

}

<I think this is the part i just copied the source from the browser. >

This the menu lists the bars restaurants etc in that resort and which ever is selcted opens in a javavscript window.
This window when you copy the url is a normal url, i have taken to submiting these pages which includes the domain name but this isn't helping get my main site listed.

This site seems to offer a solution has anyone used their product and does it work? [xde.net...]

hope this helps explain the situation more clearly.

[lazerzubb]

A tip, don't use .asp?id=

ID is a trigger for Session ID's.
Test to change it to .asp?product= or anything like it which isn't a generic, also there is a lot of software out there, just do a search for "asp rewrite".

[Torben Lundsgaard]

Hi chompy, Welcome to WebmasterWorld

Please make sure you read the welcome post [webmasterworld.com]

ASP doesn't have to be a barrier to SE's. You can easily rewrite the URL to a SE friendly form. Please see CMS built pages - how do you optimise them? [webmasterworld.com]

Torben