Hey, I am thinking to use mod_rewrite for my forum, but one of the things I am afraid of is the currently index "dynamic" URLs. Will they be delete/removed from google cache if I start using mod_rewrite? any body have any experience with that? Thanks in advance!
Definately re-write your URLs it does help. Just use 301 re-direct from old to new and google will update its index to reflect the change.
Do what I do, explicitly tell google spider to not index any dynamic content via robots.txt like so: User-agent: Googlebot Disallow: /*? Code (markup): hope it helps. Only google understands that robots directive, so it will not work for other spiders. Hope it helps. ttgapers
mod_rewrite has positive effect on indexing. you can block the old urls in robots.txt file. if you have pages like /showthread.php?t=312538 or /showthread.php?t=31258668 , you have to add Disallow: /showthread.php$ to your robots.txt file. after this you have to wait googlebot to delete your old urls
I guess you got me wrong I don't want to block the current dynamic URLs, I am just wondering if I start using mod_rewrite, will that have any effect on the dynamic URLs, will they be dropped from google index? Thanks again
Yes they will get updated in googles index, how long this takes depends on your page strength, how often you get crawled, backlinks to the particular page etc.
since your dynamic urls are already indexed and if entered in a browser will show the same content as a mod_rewrited page, then yes it would be considered duplicate content and you risk google's wrath. therefore u need to explicitly tell googlebot not to index any urls that include a ? , and thus the rule i mentioned to you above be added to your robots.txt. ttgapers