Are cgi pages crawled

[kenjack]

I use a free web site building tool and have good rankings for the home page but I've realized that the inside pages are cgi pages which I believe means that they are not entirely 'real'. Sorry, maybe you can also tell me what cgi pages are. But I've paid to have some in inktomi and there's no problem getting them listed there but I realize that google has not picked up any of them even though I individually submitted them and there's a text link to them on my home page.

Relatedly, I understand that database pages (is that cgi) are not real pages but are created upon request. Can one submit the url for such a page and have it listed on an engine?

Thanks so much.

[storevalley]

CGI pages are, as you suspected, dynamically generated.

I have never seen a cgi page listed in the SERPs directly, but the search engines will index them if they are hiding behind a rewritten URL.

An example ...

• Your cgi page is widget.cgi
  
• You put a link on one of your other pages to widget.htm
  
• You then redirect all visitors heading for widget.cgi to widget.htm using (e.g.) .htaccess.
  

In this instance, there is a fair chance that widget.htm will be listed by the search engines.

[kenjack]

Thanks for the help; it's great. Just a comment though on your reference to not seeing cgi pages on the engines. Interestingly I do have them in inktomi. Paid for, of course. So, I guess it's possible.