indexing dynamic url

some say yes, others say no

[stef25]

most sources ive read seem to agree on the fact that SE will not index dynamic url's with? and & in it - they stop reading the url at that point

im using a widely used php script to post news articles on a site. on the forums supporting this script, some people seem to say their pages are indexed by SE, other say they have to resort to mod_rewrite but no proof is offered

i have created some links to dynamic pages with? and & in it off my homepage to see if they would get indexed, but nothing has happened after 2 weeks. i realise this may be too short a time

what is the consecus on the indexing of pages with? and & in the url?

[agerhart]

The pages will get indexed, but you should definitely pursue optimizing them to appear static. There are quite a few resources here on this topic.

[caveman]

stef25, this is a widely misunderstood issue I think, probably because the search engines' ability to spider these pages have evolved, and so has their stance on which of these sorts of pages they are willing to spider and index.

Since the major search engines are not precisely the same, but close enough on this, let's just generalize for SEO purposes. Basically, the SE's are for the most part now able to spider dynamic URL's. I have evidence of some grotesquely ugly and long URI's, filled with special characters, that are indexed.

However, based on my own observations and comments from the various SE reps:

If you include more than two special characters in the URI, the chances of the URI getting spidered go down.

If the URI is very long (you know the kind ... all the way across the browser bar address field), the chances of being spidered go down.

If the dynamic URI's contain "ID" in the string, chances of being spidered drop dramatically. The SE's don't like session ID's, and there may be other reasons too.

As for rewriting the URI's into keyword based strings (e.g., example.com/widgets/blue/) I still believe there is a very slight advantage from an SEO perspective to do this.

More important in my view however: In most SERP's the URI of a listing is visible, and that helps searchers understand what a page is about. So whether a surfer is looking at your listing in the SERP's, or is already on site, having user friendly, easy to understand URI's helps users, and that's a great reason to have static looking URI's if possible, IMHO.

So if I'm building a site from scratch, I develop it to display static URI's. If I'm advising someone else on their site, where the URI's are already in place, if the URI's are not problematic (as defined by the short list above), and the pages are ranking, I leave them alone, since changing URI's these days for established pages will probably lose you far more than it gets you, thanks to the poor way in which G especially is handling redirects and dup filters.

[stef25]

thanks for these explanations, much appreciated

[sem_scotty]

some SEOs believe/show that a dynamic page may be indexed, but not positioned as well as it would be if static.

[agerhart]

some SEOs believe/show that a dynamic page may be indexed, but not positioned as well as it would be if static.

The search engines will only know your website or webpage is dynamic if you LET them. You just need to have good programmers and SEOs that can develop a dynamic site to appear as though it is static.

[stef25]

"appear as though it it static" - now we are talking mod_rewrite?

[agerhart]

sure, or ISAPI filters.