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Google and dynamic links

Will Googlebot follow?

         

Arnett

10:42 pm on Sep 15, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I just set up a php based catalog site. I need to get some insight from you guys (and gals) concerning Google and dynamically generated pages. What I'll do is give you a couple of examples and ask you in each case whether Googlebots will follow and index the dynamic urls.

If not,then why...

This is an example of a product type within category dynamic page created by a page called results.php:

http://www.my-site.com/results.php?category=Cat&subcategory=SubCat%26+ProductType&count=10

It will retrieve the products by category,subcategory and Product type,displaying them 10 per page.

This is an example of a product detail dynamic page generated by a page called detail.php (SKU=Stock Keeping Units):

http://www.my-site.com/detail.php?sku=SKUNumber

It will retrieve the product detail and display everything on one catalog page.

I'm assuming that you are following me here. The question is whether Googlebot will....

:-(

Arnett

11:50 pm on Sep 15, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I may have answered my own question. I did a search in Google and found this url (I substituted the identifying text) in the results:

www.a-software-company.com/showpads.php?sort=Category&cat=Category:%20Software%20Type

I'm assuming that if Google can index this url it can handle mine. Am I right?

ciml

12:00 am on Sep 16, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Yes, Google can index those URLs and follow them. Depending on how good your incoming links are and how big your site is, you may find that 'static' looking URLs get spidered deeper.

GoogleGuy

2:48 am on Sep 16, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



If possible, I'd try to keep the number of parameters small (one or two is best). I didn't see any other issues with the urls you mentioned..

Arnett

2:50 am on Sep 16, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Depending on how good your incoming links are and how big your site is, you may find that 'static' looking URLs get spidered deeper.

Basically,the php system is 3 files. One controls the appearance of the home page,one handles the search results and the third handles the product detail. Their appearance is fairly 'static'. If Google can follow the links from those three pages down one level and index everything it finds I should be ok with the depth of the crawl. It also includes some rotating product in home page.

As long as GoogleBot can handle indexing 3 pages 1 level down I should be ok for the bulk of the indexing.

Thanks again for the help. There are over 21,000 products in the catalog. I don't expect them to all be indexed as dynamic urls in the first cycle but I hope that,through design,that GoogleBot gets to all of them over time.

I'm working incoming links carefully. If I can generate the right off-site anchor from quality sources I can pass the PR through the site and around within the site and get off to a running start. Then it's just a matter of working allintitle,allintext and allinurl to make up the onsite factors to gaining rank and position.

Arnett

2:54 am on Sep 16, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I'd try to keep the number of parameters small (one or two is best)

By parameters I hope that you mean the "?" variables? I was concerned about that myself. The longer the string gets and the more variables there are in it the greater chance that the ball can get dropped along the way.

I'm only recently getting involved with php. I'm hoping that LAMP (Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP) is stable and well-accepted so that I can spend some time learning the platform for the long-haul.

GoogleGuy

6:06 am on Sep 16, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Exactly, Arnett. Lots of parameters means that it's harder to guarantee that they're important. LAMP is well supported--good luck!

kodiat

6:43 am on Sep 16, 2003 (gmt 0)



In my case, it's been several months since I change my static pages (members...01.php, members...02.php) to dynamically generated PHP web pages (members.php?id=1, members.php?id=2). Until now, not even single page of my dynamic pages has been cached by Google.
Is there anything wrong with it? Thanks

Erwin Kodiat

Arnett

12:45 am on Sep 17, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



not even single page of my dynamic pages has been cached by Google

It's been a few weeks since I changed my html site over to php scripts. I did a check for the existence of the .php files in the index and the ones which are accessible by home page links are in the index.

Only two of the pages are cached,however. I don't know why that is. There have been some issues raised in the press over whether Google has the right to cache copies of works that it doesn't own or have rights to copy. I doubt that's why though...

I'm just happy that Google is following the links in my .php generated pages...I had my doubts...

Arnett

2:18 am on Sep 17, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



...if you have plenty of PageRank and you just have one '?' with no '&' characters this is unlikely to be problem nowadays. - CIML from another topic

My links have one '?' and include '&' and '=' in the urls. Are you telling me that they won't be indexed correctly? The site is new and has virtually no pagerank yet. Why is this a problem?

Arnett

4:23 am on Sep 17, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Lots of parameters means that it's harder to guarantee that they're important.

Google should do a major rethink on that position.

If I were only searching for widgets a single parameter would be fine.

If I need a specific type of widget then multiple parameters would be necessary at my php driven widget site so that my customer could find widgets to meet their needs

Correct size - What size widget do you want?
color - What color do you want?
material - paper or plastic?
strength - regular or heavy duty?
ambient temperature range - Inside,outside,all-season?
finish quality grade - Are they for customers or your use?
price - depending on what your needs are we've got your widget at your price.

Why should my customer spend an hour searching for just the right widget when I can use a high-level application development language to search my entire inventory and show them the widgets that meet their specs?

Widgets aren't necessarily widgets. Even if they are they're the wrong widgets.

Lots of parameters means that it's harder to guarantee that they're important.

They're ALL important.