php and spider indexing

[snook]

We have drop down menus on our main index.php3 page, which searches our database for what is selected. (mysql_query)

Problem is, these menu options are not picked up by the spiders. (using Bretts tool here to test it [searchengineworld.com...] )

Can someone tell me what we could do to correct this?

[Birdman]

A site map will do the trick but beware that if the urls have more than one query string, they still may not get indexed.

mod_rewrite or something similar can make your urls spider-friendly if you use more than one query string.

[snook]

I added a site map, thanks for the advice.
But I would like to get all our pages picked up.

Any other advice how we can make php on our site more search engine friendly?

Thanks!

[dhdweb]

Any other advice how we can make php on our site more search engine friendly?

Should be just as friendly as .htm or .html

Like said above, you only run into problems when your url's have more than one query string.

I have many .php pages getting indexed just fine.

[ukgimp]

Do you have to use a drop down? Can you not create a future proof heirarchical navigation system.

In fact, you can do a lot lot worse than look at the way this site is set up wrt its naviagtion.

Then of course there is apache rewrite if you wish to get rid of those querystrings

Just a thought for you

[snook]

Not familar with "future proof heirarchical navigation system"

We have a very large database, so I don't know what other method for navigation we could use, that would be as effective...

[ukgimp]

Have you taken a look at this page:

[searchengineworld.com...]

The term I used as future proof etc is not a recognised one :). I meant a principle. If you see from Bretts article it would be easy to add another category at almost any level. It may involve a lot of work grouping your site in this way but if you have clear links up and down the chain all your pages should be found and crawled etc.

If you have monster long list of DB entries you may need to classify them with a partent/child arrangement so that they can be ordered logically when spat out of the DB depending on a query string paramater. Have a look at "phphoo" for a nice example of this categorising process.

HTH a little