Indexing Dynamic Sites For Search Engines?

Posted by Cliff on Sunday January 7, 2001 @05:04AM from the mapping-content-that-changes dept.

Moeses asks: "I am working on a Web site that uses the Altavista search engine software. The latest version of the site has moved most of the data from static pages to dynamic pages. This causes some issues to arise, but I've developed work arounds for most of them, such as generating pages with URL's that contain all the query string information to index the whole database and code to handle situations where a user searches for something that can't be displayed because of some state information specific to that users session, but there are still enough issues that I can't index all the states of the files that I need. Building a custom search engine for the database isn't within the budget of this project. What are you others doing to index and search your dynamic sites?"

1 of 7 comments (clear)

Min score:

Reason:

Sort:

mod_rewrite ! by mbyte · 2001-01-07 04:32 · Score: 5

use mod_rewrite to make your dynamic pages look like static html.

An example:

you have a script called news.php and an news index id (news.php?id=42 i.e.).
You could map that to
news_id42.html with
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule .*_id(.*)\.html$ news.php?id=$1

in your .htaccess.
Voila ! your dynamic content looks exactly like a static html page.

Anoter one is to fool searchengines that the script is an directory:

foobar.php/param1/param2/

Works perfectly fine ... ;) but this technique doesn't seem to work with all searchengines.
(don't remember which ....)

regards,
Michael

Samba Information HQ