Does Ink choke on ? marks in the URL?

and does it matter if you use PFI?

[skibum]

I'm sure this has been answered somewhere beofre, but couldn't find it. Does Ink work it's way around dynamic content with a ? in the URL, does the pay for inclusion help it get around the ? mark?

[stcrim]

skibum,

There is dynamic content in INK but as far as rank-ability is concerned, I don't know (hopefully someone does) My personal rule of thump has been and is - if it's not straight html don't count on it.

PT may be able to answer the PTP getting around the "?"

-s-

[georged]

I have put a couple of '?' pages into Inktomi with no problems. The phrases I was asked to rank them for are not really competitive at all, so this isn't a litmus test, but nine of the INK supplied engines have it at either #1 or #2...
I can't see any reason why it wouldn't work for more competitive phrases.

[skibum]

I guess maybe the better general question for Ink, Google and the rest might how are ? pages handled differently when it comes to ranking.

As you said, stcrim - if it's not straight html don't count on it. - that's probably the best bet for now. I searched for a bunch of diferent things, and didn't see one ? page.

[Brett_Tabke]

I don't think they treat ? any different once it is indexed. If you use the pfp system, you can add all the dynamic stuff you want. There are some pfp'ers who have thousands upon tens of thousands of dynamic stuff listed (ck some of the "book" related kw's - spam city).

[Laisha]

>I don't think they treat ? any different once it is indexed.

This is my understanding as well.

The problem isn't actually that it can't index pages which contain the ? character, but that it can't crawl links to dynamic pages, or pages created on the fly.

When a spider gets to such a page, it can't follow the links because ahead of it, it sees an infinite number of pages. This is assessed as a "black hole" which would cause it to crash.

Remember, too, that a spider doesn't know how to fill out a form.

We have hundreds of these pages indexed, both via PT and via the "old" free route, and they have always done well.