Re: Search engines and SSi files

From: John Charlesworth http://www.bellacoola.com/?hd <jcharlesworth_at_bellacoola.com>
Date: Wed 17 Nov 1999 08:58:25 -0800

JANET ATTARD WROTE:
>Does anyone know what effect using server side include
>files has on search engines? Do they follow the links
>in the included files? Or would it be better not to use
>SSI on pages submitted to search engines?

It depends on which scenario fits your situation ;-)

Scenario #1 (Server-side-includes): If you use
server-side-includes, then your web server will fully
assemble the page (including meta tags and links) before it
gets sent out *regardless* of who/what is requesting it
(i.e. a browser or search engine). No special action
required.


Scenario #2 (Client-side-includes): If you use
client-side-includes (for instance the javascript source=
tag, or MSIE's IFRAME tag), then the search engines will
index the pages as if these parts were *not* included.


Scenario #3 (URL-based parameters): If your
dynamically-generated pages require URL-based parameters
(i.e. a ?param=value suffix), then most engines will >not<
index the page (because they assume that there are endless
permutations, based on the input parameters). In this case,
you would need to build the parameters into the path name of
the page to get the search engines to index it. We have
successfully used this technique ourselves.


Scenario #4 (File name suffixes): If your
dynamically-generated page names end in .pl, or .cgi, then
AltaVista will index the pages but InfoSeek won't. (.cfm
pages are fine, as long as they have no parameters). For
Infoseek, there >are< work-arounds though (again, which we
have successfully used).


Scenario #5 (cgi-bin directories): InfoSeek won't index any
files located in cgi-bin directories, whether they're
dynamic or not. If you have indexable pages in your cgi-bin
directory, you will have to move them to another directory.


I hope this helps.

Cheers,
.../j

---------------- <mailto:jcharlesworth_at_bellacoola.com> ----------------
John Charlesworth, President BellaCoola Software Corporation

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Received on Wed Nov 17 1999 - 10:58:25 CST