SEO Tycoon

**sandbox** · 09-25-2006, 05:17 PM

OK I'm told that dynamic pages can't be indexed very well, I've had my pages indexed then dropped in two weeks! URL looks like: www.mysite/name.asp?var=name Does anyone know a work around?

This is getting a bit frustrating my pages were indexed but are not indexed now, any help would be great.

**ADAM Web Design** · 09-25-2006, 05:44 PM

Dynamic pages can be indexed, although they do have some caveats:

1) "Dynamic" pages containing the same content but different URLs are usually indexed once and once only. So if you have www.mysite.com/name.asp?a=1 and www.mysite.com/name.asp?a=2 , both of which displayed the same thing, only one of those would get indexed (assuming you had an inbound link or more to that page.)

2) Pages containing long querystrings will often throw off an SE (e.g. www.mysite.com/name.asp?a=1&b=2&c=3&d=342423859130458129548312931-45823459823-45&so=on&so=on...

3) Pages containing a session variable in the URL or some other unique identifier for the user are bad SE mojo.

Those are the major ones. Other than that, I haven't noticed anything personally.

What's your site? There may be something else going on. (There usually is.)

**sandbox** · 09-27-2006, 12:48 PM

Interesting points you've made their Adam, Here's what happened:
I've updated my site in the last moth adding dynamic pages because it's easier to update and I have page counters and visitors can add comments - I thought it was pretty cool. Google took about a month to visit the site and indexed pretty much all of the pages, including the dynamic ones, then google came back about a week later and now I have only one dynamic page indexed?

Could it just be google settling down with the new content?
I've put links on some static pages to see if that will encourage google to index the dynamic pages - is that about all I can do unless I try URL rewriting?

Oh site is www.geo-dome.co.uk

**ADAM Web Design** · 01:26 PM

Wow, I didn't think I'd see anyone else on here that ever dealt with sustainable buildings.

I do design work for a company that focuses bigtime on that stuff. They're doing a conference at the end of October.

www.greenbuildingfest.com

They also run this:

www.sustainabilityincubator.com

But enough about sustainability since most people on this board probably don't wanna talk about it.

Anyway, as far as the dynamic pages go, what I would suggest you do is to delete your old pages set up a custom 404 page (http://www.4guysfromrolla.com/webtech/123000-1.shtml is a good tutorial, except use a 301 redirect instead of Response.Redirect and you'll be all good) and try to get some more inbound links from quality spots just so big G can have more reasons to crawl your site.

In other words, delete old pages, and use custom 404 to redirect Google from the old URLs to the new ones. You only want one URL for each page, because any more than that will run the risk of duplicate content penalty triggering.

I like the geodesic dome idea, by the way. Maybe you could borrow from the Sustainable Condo idea and try to build something like that. (Geodesic Condome...wait...that sounds kinda sexual.)

**sandbox** · 09-27-2006, 03:30 PM

LOL Thanks Adam,
That's great, so there's no problem with the dynamic pages.
I didn't want to delete the old pages until I checked that the new asp pages were OK

I think you've coined a phrase their, what's the chance of getting No 1 in google for "geodesic condome"

it's got to be done really, Cheers

**vangogh** · 09-27-2006, 04:36 PM

I can't claim to know much about sustainable buildings, but if the conversation deals with architecture in any way you can count me. I may have to listen more than I can contribute though.

By the way sandbox Adam's advice is all good and just what I would do as well.

geodesic condome is about as uncompetitive as can be. Add it to the title of any page and it will probably be #1 or #2 behind this thread.

**sandbox** · 09-27-2006, 07:10 PM

I've done a quick article and used the words geodesic condome a few times, I've also added a link to it in my sig... So lets see if I get this page indexed, it's a dynamic page with ? and = in the URL

All we have to do now is wait... If the page is indexed I owe Adam and Vangogh a beer, I'll post back later with results,

Cheers guys

**vangogh** · 09-27-2006, 08:10 PM

Cool. That's probably enough to get to #1. Dynamic pages aren't a problem thoiugh the recommendation is to limit the number of parameters and not to use a paramater like id.

Search engines have no problem reading them though. You can always set up search friendly urls with a .htaccess file too.

I think Adam deserves more of that beer. All I really did was agree with him. I'll gladly drink it though.

**ADAM Web Design** · 09-27-2006, 11:33 PM

Dude...that wasn't advice you were supposed to take seriously. But hell, why not?

Seriously, when you get first page ranking for that phrase, you'd better use it in every possible manner of conversation you can come up with. If you can do that, and get others using it, then you'll have basically pulled off the ultimate SEO trick...you'll have gotten high ranking for a phrase BEFORE anyone else even knew about it (except us.)

**vangogh** · 09-28-2006, 01:50 AM

Adam, then you and I can write the article describing how it was all done and create some link bait for ourselves.

How I earned $1,000,000 by creating my own keyphrase and getting people to use it. My secrets revealed.

**sandbox** · 09-28-2006, 06:43 PM

Hey guys, I'm No1 for geodesic condome in MSN, the only thing is it's the wrong page? sitemap.asp which has a link to the condome article is showing first ahead of the escort service in budapest (which was first yesterday). I'm guessing this is because my sitemap page is allready indexed

Nothing yet in google. I do find that MSN are quicker to index pages than google so I'll hang on a bit.

That's another great idea Adam about getting people to search for "geodesic condome" The only thing is they may be a bit disapointed when they arrive at my thrown together article and never come back to my site again.
still a good idea though

**ADAM Web Design** · 08:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by vangogh

Adam, then you and I can write the article describing how it was all done and create some link bait for ourselves.

How I earned $1,000,000 by creating my own keyphrase and getting people to use it. My secrets revealed.

heh I'm down. Although right now I need linkbait like I need a rattlesnake bite to the leg.

sandbox: ihas your article itself been indexed yet? If so, then you've got some other issue (maybe link to the article from the home page, since it's your new featured term?)

**sandbox** · 09-29-2006, 08:57 PM

No Adam, the page itself is not indexed in google but both the sitmap and the article are indexed in MSN.

I think google may take a bit longer, I'll check my site stats

**jaguar-archie15** · 09-30-2006, 02:24 PM

mostly, having dynamic pages is diff on html pages, Html is much Faster to crawl rather than dynamic pages.

**chrishirst** · 10-01-2006, 03:36 AM

Quote:

having dynamic pages is diff on html pages, Html is much Faster to crawl rather than dynamic pages.

Huh??

All pages php, asp, cfm, htm(l) etc are ALL HTML when the SEs see them

**sandbox** · 10-01-2006, 08:12 PM

Yeh chrishirst, all pages look like html to a spider but...
dynamic pages don't exist until you exicute a query and it's the query that the spider can choke on. If your URL has session variables or user entered data a spider isn't going to be able to enter that data so won't see the page.

So if you use a static link which includes the variables in the url like www.mysite/page.asp?search=widget&textvalue=blue a spider should be able to follow it. I have read in other forums that some spiders may chop off everything after the ? so your page would jut be /page.asp and not show your blue widget article. Adam and vangogh are saying that there should be no problem getting a dynamic page indexed.

So to test the thoery we're trying to get a brand new dynamic page indexed in google, so far we've:

Got indexed in MSN first a existing page linking to the new pagw then the new page - took just a couple of days

Got one of my old posts indexed in google here on webmaster talk - because I changed my sig to link to the article using the magic keywords "geodesic condome"

Nothing in Yahoo.

Conclusions: MSN do index dynamic pages and very quickly too. Google and Yahoo are inconclusive as yet but I'll post here if anything happens.

**chrishirst** · 10-02-2006, 03:32 AM

Quote:

dynamic pages don't exist until you exicute a query and it's the query that the spider can choke on. If your URL has session variables or user entered data a spider isn't going to be able to enter that data so won't see the page.

Nope if a SE crawler "chokes" on the query so will browsers.
If the URL has session variables it will create an infinite number of duplicates NOT stop the crawler.
Having user inputted data is a different issue from dynamic pages, bots can't submit forms. That would hold true regardless of whether the pages were dynamic or not.

Quote:

have read in other forums that some spiders may chop off everything after the ? so your page would jut be /page.asp and not show your blue widget article. Adam and vangogh are saying that there should be no problem getting a dynamic page indexed.

What you have read is a mis-quote (or you didn't read it thoroughly) from a Google comment on how their algo can check for crawlable "dynamic" pages.
If the crawler gets a response other than 200 it can be sent out again, only this time with a parameter removed.
There is NO problems getting dynamic pages crawled.

Quote:

Conclusions: MSN do index dynamic pages and very quickly too. Google and Yahoo are inconclusive as yet but I'll post here if anything happens.

All the SEs crawl dynamic pages, all you are showing is that MSN got there first. Which is very often the case with any page.
More important than when it appears in the index is the point when the crawler first hit the page.

**vangogh** · 10-02-2006, 04:36 PM

Just want to echo everything Chris said. And also add one thing about dynamic urls. Best practice is to limit the number of parameters in the url and avoid using parameters like id=, but search spiders can and do read and crawl dynamic urls.

**sandbox** · 10-02-2006, 05:11 PM

Sorry chrishirst I was playing devils advocate, I read three articles before I made this post all of which suggest there is a problem indexing dynamic pages:

http://www.sitepoint.com/print/dynam...seo-tips-hints

http://www.webworksite.com/articles/article20.php

http://www.rankforsales.com/optimiza...web-sites.html

I found them searching google for "seo for dynamic pages" so I guess there's a lot of people being misinformed. I would tend to agree with you, Adam and vangogh about SEs being able to index dynamic pages but for the benefit of someone reading this thread who doesn't know (I didn't four days ago) I want to provide some element of proof, I never believe anything I read in forums or on the net without being able to validate it in some way, so I get a bit anal about research and testing.

**stOx** · 10-02-2006, 07:06 PM

One of those articles is 4 years old, I don't know how old the other is.. But in a recent matt cutts video he said that spiders have no trouble spidering and indexing dynamic URL's, as long as there are only a few parameters and as long as it contains nothing that looks like a session id.