Re: FN-FORUM: help with getting .php files indexed on search engines

date posted 17th January 2006 16:45



D D Glendinning wrote:

>Until now I have never really thought of how .php pages are indexed in
>search engines. If for example you have a number of news articles,
>which are listed in summary on news.php page, and full details is
>available on viewNews.php?NewsID=someID, then are the full news pages
>indexed?
>(as in viewNews.php?ID=1, viewNews.php?ID=2, etc..)
>
>
>
>
I have often heard people say that you don't get indexed if you use url
parameters like that, but I have never actually had any problems with
this myself over many years. My feeling is that if your search engine
didn't index files with querystring parameters it would only find about
10% of what is out there.

That said, I've never been that competetive about getting querystring
parameterized (querystrung?) pages to the top of search engines, I've
just not found it to obstruct search engine indexing.

It is quite easy, with a bit of understanding about how your server
works, to use url-rewriting so that instead of having
/mysite/news.php?id=123 you would have /mysite/123/news.php or
/mysite/news-123.php and the server would rewrite it so that your
application would see it as /mysite/news.php?id=123 using mod_rewrite or
equivalent. I haven't done this in PHP but it's pretty easy with asp.net
and I've used mod_rewrite a few times, which seems to work fine if you
have access to it.

-ben