Google and Dynamic Web Pages

[dave1167]

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Hi
I'm new to Affiliate marketing, but have developed web pages for many years. I am about to setup a new site.

The problem is quite a lot of the content is going to be dynamic (ASP.Net 2.0) and drawn from a back end database. The Google spider didn't used to crawl dynamic pages is this still the case. I notice a lot of other affilate sites are using PHP so presumably these must get crawled and subsequently ranked.

If it is true then dynamic pages are not going to get ranked by google then it's back to the drawing board!!

[pricethat]

They dont seem to rank as high as a static page if you take like for like content. It s not true that dynamic pages don't get ranked, indeed some of the most highly ranked sites are dynamic such as this site for example. ( i guess you missed this one ).

Having said that use your asp equivalent of mod_rewrite, we mask all of our urls using this and also hide the parameters within the urls so to all intents and purposes it appears as a static html page without complications.

I think for the most of it dynamic pages cause bots a lot more work to work out which url is actually the real url as some dynamic pages could be page=1 but others could be page=1&showvalues=2 which could just be the same page but with a different price for buying two items for example. If the bot was not clever enough to work out that it is the same page then google etc would be a hundred times more full of junk than they are now, fortunately they are seemingly better at it but i think you can see its lots more work for them. Do a search for mod_rewrite to see how that works and then look for the asp version of it. I haven't a clue about asp so i cant really help with that.

[andysears]

I once had a DIY holiday site and had ASP dynamic pages on that, a particular page generated a Calendar. Google seemed to befriend it.

cal.asp sears-online entered into google results in 1240 results each with a different date.

[markzz]

Hi there. Google does not penalize dynamic pages in anyway, as long as you let it crawl them properley. The only problems are if you use multiple query strings in a single URL, Google doesn't like that or if the spider gets stuck in a potential "loop".

If you are using ASP/.NET you can use IIS rewrite instead of mod_rewrite, this will make your URLs appear as nice static HTML pages. My advice would be keep query strings and "ID=" to a minimum and upload a full sitemap, as well as having an onpage sitemap.

[ejmo]

Hi, I am just looking at using a dynamic page for the first time and I am also concerned about google. What is "multiple query strings in a single URL" and what do they look like? I was going to use the data feed from affiliate window.
Cheers, Phil.

[accelerator]

Hi, I am just looking at using a dynamic page for the first time and I am also concerned about google. What is "multiple query strings in a single URL" and what do they look like? I was going to use the data feed from affiliate window.
Cheers, Phil.

Stuff like:

mypage.asp?myvariable1=1&myvariable2=2&myvariable3 =3

Just remember that a spider can't select on page elements etc, it can't go through forms easily, so make sure it can just go through the site by following simple links.

You will find more useful comments on Matt Cutts blog.

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/

Rgds

Accelerator

[tbp]

Google can index dynamic sites fine, just restrict pages you don't want the spider to index with meta tags or robots.txt file.

Remember not to use the parameter id= , as pages with an id parameter are not indexed by google as it assumes its a unique session identifier.

[IntervisionMedia]

Install ISAPI_REWRITE from Helicon on your server, it's IIS's equivalent to mod_rewrite. So you can use friendly urls e.g.

site.com/products/a-cool-product-you-should-buy/

Hope that helps

Edit:

Oh and don't use postbacks for navigation etc if you're using ASP.NET, and try to stear clear of the more advanced controls and stick to literals and repeaters, so it keeps your code clean and doesn't clutter up the viewstate too much.

[sem4u]

Remember not to use the parameter id= , as pages with an id parameter are not indexed by google as it assumes its a unique session identifier.

There are loads and loads of pages indexed by Google with the id= parameter. I have a load in there myself.

[Lee_Owen]

Install ISAPI_REWRITE from Helicon on your server, it's IIS's equivalent to mod_rewrite. So you can use friendly urls e.g.

site.com/products/a-cool-product-you-should-buy/

Hope that helps

Edit:

Oh and don't use postbacks for navigation etc if you're using ASP.NET, and try to stear clear of the more advanced controls and stick to literals and repeaters, so it keeps your code clean and doesn't clutter up the viewstate too much.

http://www.helicontech.com/order/#isapi_rewrite

I don't suppose there's anything free that will do the same thing is there and is it automatic after install or do I have to fiddle a bit? (steady) And I presume if I have 100 websites on cpanel, then that counts as one licence perhaps? The latter is a yes, if hostroute will allow. And I think I'll have to fiddle.

[Lee_Owen]

I note there's a free version, ISAPI_Rewrite Lite ( freeware ) if I bung that on will that simply change the urls to read, product title? or do I need the paid version, apologies for asking questions here... but not many.

[Barry]

Does anybody know what happened to iismods.com, I once used that on a few small Price Tapestry sites and it worked ok, now the website has gone.

If I write my own site I always use custom 404's to rewrite the urls on my windows box as 'static' urls are a lot easier to monitor in your logs and optimise, however the Pricerunner script I have at the moment I can't be bothered to modify it to work with a custom 404 so I am going to go with dynamic url's. One thing I am watching is to stop 'loops' as has been said. For example any pages that have been sorted by the eg 'price' column as oppossed to just the normal alphabetical list has a noindex command in to try and stop indexing of duplicate content and bots getting stuck in one particular part of the site.

All in all I dont think there is much difference these days in how google 'sees' dynamic pages as oppossed to 'static' ones.

Ta