[PHP-DB] Search engines database driven sites
Greetings I'm not sure my question fits into the remit of this list - so apologies in advance if it's off track... Please point me in a more suitable direction is necessary! I recently converted my sites from hardwired HTML to a PHP/MySQL combination - with dynamic 'newsy' info held in a database, tailored for each visitor. Unfortunately the 'hit rate' from search engines has gone virtually to zero as Altavista, Hotbot etc. removed me from their indexes - they don't index .php files as far as I can see, and also don't follow links on php pages (I imagine it's the same for ASP, ColdFusion etc.). In contrast Google and All The Web have no problems with the .php extension (and even index my .pdf files!). I would be grateful for any wisdom on how best to deal with this. I could of course make an HTML intro page, but that would be a pity since I'd hardly be able to an intro page that conveys all the necessary info to bring the right visitors. Any advice on how to do this well? I could alternatively change the setting of the PHP parser to parse all .html as if it's php. Unfortunately I'm sharing a server right now and my ISP is unlikely to accept this because of the reduction in performance (I may be prepared to move to a dedicated server if necessary though). Lastly I thought of writing a PHP routine that, run once a day, will make a few HTML 'mirror' pages based on the content of the database to capture the search engine visitors. I could do that, but it seems to defeat the purpose of the dynamic pages somewhat... pity. Any other ideas? How do others deal with this issue? Regards Grant --- Grant Ballard-Tremeer, HEDON Household Energy Network http://www.ecoharmony.net/hedon/ eco Ltd. http://ecoharmony.com --- -- PHP Database Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To contact the list administrators, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: [PHP-DB] Search engines database driven sites
Here is an article by Tim Perdue. Every time I lookup php stuff in google, phpbuilder shows up so he must be doing something right. http://www.phpbuilder.com/columns/tim2526.php3 Leon -Original Message- From: Grant Ballard-Tremeer [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Tuesday, February 27, 2001 7:25 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PHP-DB] Search engines database driven sites Greetings I'm not sure my question fits into the remit of this list - so apologies in advance if it's off track... Please point me in a more suitable direction is necessary! I recently converted my sites from hardwired HTML to a PHP/MySQL combination - with dynamic 'newsy' info held in a database, tailored for each visitor. Unfortunately the 'hit rate' from search engines has gone virtually to zero as Altavista, Hotbot etc. removed me from their indexes - they don't index .php files as far as I can see, and also don't follow links on php pages (I imagine it's the same for ASP, ColdFusion etc.). In contrast Google and All The Web have no problems with the .php extension (and even index my .pdf files!). I would be grateful for any wisdom on how best to deal with this. I could of course make an HTML intro page, but that would be a pity since I'd hardly be able to an intro page that conveys all the necessary info to bring the right visitors. Any advice on how to do this well? I could alternatively change the setting of the PHP parser to parse all .html as if it's php. Unfortunately I'm sharing a server right now and my ISP is unlikely to accept this because of the reduction in performance (I may be prepared to move to a dedicated server if necessary though). Lastly I thought of writing a PHP routine that, run once a day, will make a few HTML 'mirror' pages based on the content of the database to capture the search engine visitors. I could do that, but it seems to defeat the purpose of the dynamic pages somewhat... pity. Any other ideas? How do others deal with this issue? Regards Grant --- Grant Ballard-Tremeer, HEDON Household Energy Network http://www.ecoharmony.net/hedon/ eco Ltd. http://ecoharmony.com --- -- PHP Database Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To contact the list administrators, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- PHP Database Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To contact the list administrators, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [PHP-DB] Search engines database driven sites
Hello Grant, Well the thing with search engines is as AltaVista puts it very nicely: quote Dynamic pages also block Web crawlers. 8 8cut 8 8 Typically such pages have a question mark (?) in the URL. When a search engine crawler arrives at such a page, it captures the content but halts immediately, and will not follow the links, because it sees ahead of it an infinite number of pages -- a black hole that would bring it to a crash. /quote This came from http://doc.altavista.com/adv_search/ast_haw_wellindexed.html where you can find more useful tips. So if you are passing variables in any way like http://www.site.com/dir/article.php?id=25 than these pages will simply not be indexed... One way to deal with this is the following: Build the link above like this: http://www.site.com/dir/25.html this document doesn't exist. In that directory you refer the 404's to article.php where you call getenv("REQUEST_URI") and look, it says 25.html which you can then use to query the database and show that article :) Roel At 12:24 27-02-2001 +, you wrote: Greetings I'm not sure my question fits into the remit of this list - so apologies in advance if it's off track... Please point me in a more suitable direction is necessary! I recently converted my sites from hardwired HTML to a PHP/MySQL combination - with dynamic 'newsy' info held in a database, tailored for each visitor. Unfortunately the 'hit rate' from search engines has gone virtually to zero as Altavista, Hotbot etc. removed me from their indexes - they don't index .php files as far as I can see, and also don't follow links on php pages (I imagine it's the same for ASP, ColdFusion etc.). In contrast Google and All The Web have no problems with the .php extension (and even index my .pdf files!). I would be grateful for any wisdom on how best to deal with this. I could of course make an HTML intro page, but that would be a pity since I'd hardly be able to an intro page that conveys all the necessary info to bring the right visitors. Any advice on how to do this well? I could alternatively change the setting of the PHP parser to parse all .html as if it's php. Unfortunately I'm sharing a server right now and my ISP is unlikely to accept this because of the reduction in performance (I may be prepared to move to a dedicated server if necessary though). Lastly I thought of writing a PHP routine that, run once a day, will make a few HTML 'mirror' pages based on the content of the database to capture the search engine visitors. I could do that, but it seems to defeat the purpose of the dynamic pages somewhat... pity. Any other ideas? How do others deal with this issue? Regards Grant --- Grant Ballard-Tremeer, HEDON Household Energy Network http://www.ecoharmony.net/hedon/ eco Ltd. http://ecoharmony.com --- -- PHP Database Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To contact the list administrators, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Mulder Technisch Advies Postbus 69 NL-2740 AB WADDINXVEEN tel. 0182-640184 fax. 0182-640185 http://www.mta.nl -- PHP Database Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To contact the list administrators, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]