Axandra news archive: 7 November 2006

• Facts of the week
• Search engine news of the week
• Articles of the week
• Recommended resources
• Previous articles

Dynamically created web pages often cause problems with search engines. If your web pages are dynamically created, it's likely that many search engines have difficulty to index them.

Why have search engines problems with dynamically created pages?

Many search engines don't like dynamically created pages because they might get in an infinite loop if they follow some dynamically created pages.

Google has an official statement about this in its webmaster guidelines:

"If you decide to use dynamic pages (i.e., the URL contains a "?" character), be aware that not every search engine spider crawls dynamic pages as well as static pages. It helps to keep the parameters short and the number of them few."

What did Google change?

Until November, Google had the following statement in its webmaster guidelines:

"Don't use "&id=" as a parameter in your URLs, as we don't include these pages in our index."

This entry has been removed from Google's guidelines. Here's the official statement from Google's blog:

"[Google now indexes] URLs that contain that parameter. So if your site uses a dynamic structure that generates it, don't worry about rewriting it -- we'll accept it just fine as is.

Keep in mind, however, that dynamic URLs with a large number of parameters may be problematic for search engine crawlers in general, so rewriting dynamic URLs into user-friendly versions is always a good practice when that option is available to you.

If you can, keeping the number of URL parameters to one or two may make it more likely that search engines will crawl your dynamic urls."

What does this mean to your web site?

If you have a dynamically created web site that uses only one or two parameters to create web pages then it's likely that Google can index your web pages without problems.

If you use more parameters then you should rewrite your URLs. Rewriting your URLs makes sure that most search engines will be able to index your site.

If you cannot rewrite your URLs then it helps if at least one stable link points to a dynamically created page. If a web page can be found through a direct link then it is more likely that search engines index that page.

If you want to find out how Google's search engine spider sees your web pages, take a look at IBP's search engine spider simulator. The spider simulator is available in IBP's free demo version and it allows you to check your web pages with any search engine spider.

SnapShot is a new service that publishes information about websites. It is similar to Alexa's service but it uses another database. You can use SnapShop to get information about the number of visitors of a web site and other information.

Problems with mshtml.dll

Some users have reported problems with the file mshtml.dll. It seems that the Windows auto update feature updates the mshtml.dll file and that Internet Explorer 6 requires a special version of that file.

If you get an mshtml.dll error message while using the IBP ranking checker or other applications then either reinstall Internet Explorer 6 or install the new Internet Explorer 7 version. That will solve the problem.

"You can now use '*' in robots directives for Yahoo! Slurp to wildcard match a sequence of characters in your URL. You can use this symbol in any part of the URL string you provide in the robots directive."

Search engine newslets

• Yahoo now supports the NOODP tag (you can add the NOODP tag to your web pages by using IBP's Website Optimization Editor).
• Smarter.com is a visual shopping search engine.
• Working with advanced queries in the Live search box.
• Google to begin selling print ads Google to sell newspaper ads.
• Google acquired JotSpot.
• Yahoo improves its Shopping Search.
• Clickriver.com allows webmasters to advertise on Amazon.com.
• Ask.com selected to power Lycos Network Search.
• Fake airline boarding pass creator is Google intern.
• Google denies report on Belgian fines.
• Video: Google’s Craig Silverstein speaks at UNC.
• ComScore releases worldwide ranking of top web properties.
• Yahoo in image advertising test on mobile phones.
• Live.com introduces 3D maps.
• Google plans an AdWords landing page update.

Barnett takes 2nd turn vs. Google

"Unlike Google, which charges advertisers on a per-click basis, Turn relies on a cost-per-action scheme. It charges advertisers only if users take desired actions, such as filling out registration forms or closing on sales."

New data on search marketing click fraud: Three action items

"We asked marketers if they were monitoring their fraud levels or not and if they were terribly concerned about it. Only 9% were worried that 'click fraud will only get worse.' On the other hand, only 20% said click fraud was a non-issue or on its way to becoming a non-issue."

"The butler is dead, the name has been tweaked, but executives at Ask.com would like to remind the world that they are still very much in business."

"We are using IBP for over 2 years now and we have doubled our revenue in the last 2 years."

"We are using IBP for over 2 years now. We have doubled our revenue in the last 2 years on web sales with the help of free search listings on Google, Yahoo and MSN, and guess what? IBP is the only marketing tool we use for our business. Thanks to IBP."
Harun Tasci, Just Dial Communications Inc

"ARELIS is the best of the breed. An exceptional product with exceptional support!"

"I was asked to evaluate ARELIS by my boss who was referred to your product by someone else.

After spending a good deal of time with the software, I discovered that although the program was exceptional in many ways, it lacked efficient link-back tracking. As a result, I started looking for other link management systems and proceeded to evaluate them one-by-one. We had a desperate need to improve our sites positioning and we knew that link exchanges were the only thing we had not yet focused on.

To date, I have CLOSELY examined twelve (12) software programs ranging in price from free to $895. All of them seemed to have at least one major shortcoming. During this process, I kept coming back to ARELIS.

Finally, I returned to Arelis permanently and have decided that this is by far the 'best of the breed'.

I am writing this letter to tell you that after all the searching and
evaluating, I guess I have become something of an expert in knowing the strengths and weaknesses of most of the major players in the link exchange software field.

You have an exceptional product with exceptional support! My compliments on a job well done."
Scott Bigler, Visual Online Data

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Back to table of contents - Visit Axandra.com

• Google's -30 penalty
• Google's Sandbox and Google's TrustRank and your web site
• The right click distance can improve your search engine rankings
• How Google's latest PageRank update affects your web site
• Six reasons why search engines ignore your web pages
• How to get out of Google's supplemental results
• Google's new Sitelinks and your web site
• How to get links from an authority web site
• View all past issues...