I've come across this before whil going to a search engine optimization conference.
There are tools out there that deal with hiding the "?" string in cgi-bin and asp queries, both for unix and windows... Here are two of them: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/mod/mod_rewrite.html http://www.isapirewrite.com/ Basically, your web page code can be http://mypage.com/products/432943/ and these above softwares will translate the page link in the back end into http://mypage.com/products?432943 or something like that. CMSes like Vignette don't have this problem, nor any other CMS that doesn't have "?" type queries. -Edward http://www.edwardtsai.com ----- Original Message ----- From: "Matthew Turvey" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Nik Martin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Friday, January 10, 2003 8:57 AM Subject: RE: [cms-list] Google Indexing (was Re: documentation for every major CM vendor) > Google will sometimes index pages with querystring parameters. The algo > Google uses to determine whether to index url's of this type is unknown, but > much speculated upon ;-) > > In my experience, Google may index mypage.cgi?t=1 if the site has a > reasonable PageRank (inward links) but will not follow any links with > querystring parameters from that dynamic page. So if mypage.cgi?a=1 links to > another page mypage.cgi?a=2, this 2nd page isn't indexed. > > WebmasterWorld Google Knowledgebase V2: > "Q: Does Google index dynamic content? > A: It will in certain instances..." > http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/2829.htm#item355 > > Google Webmaster Guidelines: > "If you decide to use dynamic pages (i.e., the URL contains a '?' > character), be aware that not every search engine spider crawls dynamic > pages as well as static pages. It helps to keep the parameters short and the > number of them small. " > http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html > > Regards, > Matt > > > -----Original Message----- > > > That's good information, but possibly needs more research to see > > if other factors (bots.txt entry maybe) determine id query string > > links get followed. > > > > Searching in Google, I remember seeing entries including the ? > > > parameter in the URL. > > > -- > http://cms-list.org/ > more signal, less noise. -- http://cms-list.org/ more signal, less noise.
