Database-driven pages and SEs

They're replacing the "/"s with gibberish

[Kimberly]

I am thrilled to see more of my pages prominently displayed when I search :)

but most of the pages that are database driven are messed up when accessed via a search engine. :(

Google replaces each / with %5C.

From Google the pages display, minus the style sheet! And the graphic, which is on a server-side include, is a broken link. Another server-side include displays fine.

What can I do? I have provided a "site map" for search engines to spider to these pages.

Many thanks in advance for replies.

[DaveAtIFG]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld Kimberly! It sounds to me as if you have several problems and none of them are very clear to me yet. You say "most of the pages that are database driven are messed up," unfortunately that's not highly technical lingo. :)

It's clear that some SEs are replacing slash characters with the corresponding ASCII code in some of your URLs. If you provide some detail as to what database program you're using and what scripting language you're using to access it, one of our database wizards may be able to suggest a work around.

From Google the pages display, minus the style sheet! And the graphic, which is on a server-side include, is a broken link. Another server-side include displays fine.

I suspect you see these problems in Google's cache of your page. If so, it indicates that Google couldn't follow the links to the style sheet and the graphic. You're probably using an address like "/style.css" where you need "style.css" Viewing your pages in several browsers will usually uncover these problems and help you track them down. Some browsers are more tolerant of these type errors than others.

Give us a bit more info about the database problem and perhaps someone can help.

[lorax]

Your URL variables need to be encoded to prevent the ASCII problem. If using PHP, for example, you would use urlencode() to prepare the variables passed by the URL.