Question

Topic: SEO/SEM

Will Dynamic Pages Hurt Natural Search Rankings?

Posted by Inbox_Interactive on 11/1/2004 at 12:54 PM ET 125 Points
If a company is preparing to launch its information site, would it be better for the articles to reside on static Web pages, or are dynamic pages okay with respect to being seen as content by search engines (primarily Google)?

In this case, the site will go live with at least 200 in-depth articles on a subject area. The Webmaster intends to store these articles in a database and create the pages dynamically as the articles are pulled up. But I am wondering if it would be preferable to have each article on its own page.

I think a 200- to 300-page site with great content (keyword rich, of course) would stand a better chance in natural search listings.

Do the various bots and spiders, etc., crawl into Web databases? My instinct is that they don't, but I thought I'd ask.

Thanks!

Paul
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RESPONSES

  • Posted by Pepper Blue on 11/1/2004 at 1:42 PM Accepted
    Paul,

    Your instincts are correct.

    The Google spider picks up some dynamically generated pages, but generally backs off when it encounters dynamic content because of the huge number of pages it could generate.

    The spider can't collect, evaluate, index or apply any PageRanking to it. The site's content, now hidden in the database, remains invisible to Google.

    I hope that helps.
  • Posted by Inbox_Interactive on 11/1/2004 at 1:53 PM Author
    Am I missing something, or does Justin's response not fit too well with Tim's?

    On the one hand, I think I understand that Justin is saying, "If you build a link, the spiders will come." However, there's really no "page" for these spiders to find, is there?

    If the URL is www.domain.com/articles.php?id=123, there really is no such page on the Web until someone clicks that link, at which time article no. 123 is merged into that page for current viewing, is there? If that's true, how can that page be indexed?
  • Posted by Peter (henna gaijin) on 11/1/2004 at 2:42 PM Accepted
    Yeah, they do seem to conflict, don't they.

    There are some articles on this in the articles are of MarketingProf. In particular, see https://www.marketingprofs.com/4/spencer2.asp (part 1) and https://www.marketingprofs.com/4/spencer3.asp (part 2 of same article).

    From this article, we have the following point:

    16. Please tell us how to avoid dynamic page issues (like the “?” in query strings).

    Either install a server module/plug-in that allows you to rewrite your links, or recode your site to embed your variables in the path info instead of the query string; or if you can’t or don’t want to bog down your IT team, enlist a “dynamic feed” service like GravityStream (www.gravitystream.com).
  • Posted by Pepper Blue on 11/1/2004 at 3:59 PM Member
    Hi Paul,

    To clarify:

    Your URL that you gave would "generally" be search engine friendly because it contains only one parameter in the URL.

    Many of the search engines, Google is one, generally don't have a problem with this - generally- but as I said above, there is a chance it may also just back off.

    When you start including multiple parameters it definitely becomes problematic because the spiders don't know exactly what the parameters are identifying.

    I'll bet Justin's URLs contain only one parameter.

    So, if you have to have the dynamically served pages, you want to keep the parameters minimized, or add static information pages.

    You can also use trusted feed services, these can work well for dynamic content.

    Anyway, that's the brief explanation as I see it as of this date, I look forward to any other comments on this one.
  • Posted by Inbox_Interactive on 11/1/2004 at 4:03 PM Author
    Thank you, everyone, for your thoughtful, helpful comments.

    (And an extra 5 points to Tim for working in the word "collude." Nice!)

    Paul
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