7 replies to this topic

[Anna]

Hi All!

First of all, I would like to say that I'm finding this forum a great read! Full of useful info, I just wish I had the time and the energy to take it all in!
You're brilliant!

I have been reading around and have understood that Google doesn't like session ids. Fair enough, that's pretty straigthforward. We are about to develop a site which will be database driven with the core pages being something like: www.domain.com/page.asp?content=20 - Is this this seen as a dynamic url? I suppose so, because if I have got it right, a dynamic url is an url with a "?" in it.

So, although the page does not use sessions, will Google still find problems indexing and ranking the page, because of the "?"?

Each individual page which we would want to be indexed would be linked from the home page, using the whole url, so you will have that button 1 links to www.domain.com/page.asp?content=20 and button 2 links to www.domain.com/page.asp?content=30, so although the content is dynamic, the links are embedded in the navigation of all pages.

Are we digging our grave here?

Any help appreciated!


Regards

Anna

[Scottie]

Hi Anna-

Welcome to the forum!

A dynamic URL like you have listed in your post will be fine- it is very similar to the dynamic URL's you see in this forum, which is getting spidered fine.

You get into trouble when there are (generally) 3 or more criteria in the search string or as you pointed out, a session ID.

[fred]

I was told that google and some other engine where fine with ? but not all of them

The problem with session id is probably du to the fact that it's usually used by transactionnal site and the content changes for every user ( like a shopping cart ),
why would a search engine index a shopping cart ?
It will live only has long has the transaction.

Why would you even want it indexed.

Seems that it's not your case... good for you

I have helped position a site which uses ? for languages like

www.site.com/page.asp?lang=en
www.site.com/page.asp?lang=fr

no problem indexing both

the problem you could get is if your content changes to often then the search engine page result might not reflect the page content, so your positions might change frequently.

Fred
Coming Soon - Nousolutions

[Scottie]

The problem with session ID's is that to an SE, every URL looks different.

[ChrisB]

Google states right in their webmaster info that they will sometimes limit the number of dynamic pages they index from any given site.

Search engine friendly urls (getting rid of the query string) have a variety of benefits. They easily remove the extension from your files so you can change the scripting language easily at a later date. They are user friendly, easier for people to remember and type in, and they're of course search engine friendly.

I know quite a few ways to easily implement search engine friendly URLs with apache and php, but not with asp. I suggest doing a search on Google for "search engine friendly urls asp"

[Matt B]

Search engine friendly urls (getting rid of the query string) have a variety of benefits.  They easily remove the extension from your files so you can change the scripting language easily at a later date. They are user friendly, easier for people to remember and type in, and they're of course search engine friendly.

FWIW, just because there are query strings in the URL does not make it search engine unfriendly. The main issue is with parameters and the length of the query string. I'll compromise on the URL memory issue - but most people just tend to copy and paste URL's.

[Paul J]

Hi Anna-

Welcome to the forum!

A dynamic URL like you have listed in your post will be fine- it is very similar to the dynamic URL's you see in this forum, which is getting spidered fine.

You get into trouble when there are (generally) 3 or more criteria in the search string or as you pointed out, a session ID.

This raises an interesting point. I'm copywriting over 1000 product pages for a company that's revamping its website. The product pages are 3 pages deep in a dynamically driven site.

I've heard that a detailed and deep site map (which we have) will help SE's find these deeper product pages by eliminating one or more steps to get to that actual page. Don't know if that made sense, but any thoughts?

Paul

[Scottie]

Yes- a site map helps spiders to find what they want as well as helping people to find what they want!