How can we output search engine frindly URL in a Database driven website?

I want the database driven website products to be crawlled by the Search Spider.

Please let me know how this can be achieved.

I take it you mean the ?'s and &'s in the url?

I think you're supposed to use a database 'lookup' table which will convert your url's to something meaningful. For example amazon.co.uk has url's which do not contain those characters. It seems to have converted the url to look like a directory path.

When you output URL's from a script remember to keep them W3C compliant. This is a problem with many websites - &'s should be output as &

Some search engines can follow dynamic links though so your site will still be spidered by a few. I think Yahoo and Lycos do this (can't remember exactly though) while Google will spider your site up to 3 levels deep. It won't go any deeper than this since there is the chance that the spider can be trapped in a loop of links which are dynamically generated.

http://searchenginewatch.com/ is a good website for stuff like that.

Hope this gives you a vague idea of what to do,

ITA
"Let us smite the evil slime eating hordes who may befall us on our quest to be the ultimate programmers of the known universe!"

: I take it you mean the ?'s and &'s in the url?
:
: I think you're supposed to use a database 'lookup' table which will convert your url's to something meaningful. For example amazon.co.uk has url's which do not contain those characters. It seems to have converted the url to look like a directory path.
:
: When you output URL's from a script remember to keep them W3C compliant. This is a problem with many websites - &'s should be output as &
:
: Some search engines can follow dynamic links though so your site will still be spidered by a few. I think Yahoo and Lycos do this (can't remember exactly though) while Google will spider your site up to 3 levels deep. It won't go any deeper than this since there is the chance that the spider can be trapped in a loop of links which are dynamically generated.
:
: http://searchenginewatch.com/ is a good website for stuff like that.
:
: Hope this gives you a vague idea of what to do,
:
: ITA
: "Let us smite the evil slime eating hordes who may befall us on our quest to be the ultimate programmers of the known universe!"
:
:
Thanks for the reply.

yes i want to avoid the queries and try to display the html url to the users.

Have you heard about php rewrite( MOD rewrite) or some thing? I think it helps web sites to output an URL which is easy on SEO.

I would like to know more about this PHP function

This message was edited by ITA at 2005-3-30 1:12:42

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: Have you heard about php rewrite( MOD rewrite) or some thing? I think it helps web sites to output an URL which is easy on SEO.
:

After doing a few searches I found out that mod_rewrite is actually an Apache module. As you said it can rewrite requested urls to give something a little more readable.

Here's a link to the page: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/mod/mod_rewrite.html
http://httpd.apache.org/docs/misc/rewriteguide.html - this gives a brief overview on how to use the module with several examples.

I haven't read the whole doc (it's quite long) but it seems that you use regular expressions to change the url given.

Hope this helps,

ITA


"Let us smite the evil slime eating hordes who may befall us on our quest to be the ultimate programmers of the known universe!"

Thanks a Million ! I am going through it now.



: This message was edited by ITA at 2005-3-30 1:12:42

---

: : Have you heard about php rewrite( MOD rewrite) or some thing? I think it helps web sites to output an URL which is easy on SEO.
: :
:
: After doing a few searches I found out that mod_rewrite is actually an Apache module. As you said it can rewrite requested urls to give something a little more readable.
:
: Here's a link to the page: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/mod/mod_rewrite.html
: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/misc/rewriteguide.html - this gives a brief overview on how to use the module with several examples.
:
: I haven't read the whole doc (it's quite long) but it seems that you use regular expressions to change the url given.
:
: Hope this helps,
:
: ITA
:
:
: "Let us smite the evil slime eating hordes who may befall us on our quest to be the ultimate programmers of the known universe!"
:
:
:
: