Search Engines & Dynamic URL for Digital Ad-Network

I added an link for the Ad-Network on my pages, but it contains a question mark, which could cause problems with getting my pages spidered and indexed:

http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/ad-network/?s=10508

I know that there is a solution "mod_rewrite rewriterule" but I have never done before. I would like to add in my .htaccess file.

Can someone give me a hand?

Besides, will I loose my points (weight), if users click on the rewritten link when they register with Ad_network?

Thanks in advance.

 

Why would that be a problem to have your pages indexed? Sounds absurd to me

 

I read somewhere that for example Yahoo will spot the "?" in the URL and could stop indexing at that point. Did I get something wrong?
Besides, such URLs are in general not SE friendly...

 

Yea any webpage with a "?" at he end gives a signal that it is a dynamic page.

Google does read "?" plus 4 numeric after that. so in your case you need to convert your webpage into a static one for the google or any other SEs for that matter to index.

This is my experience..

 

I dunno, look at these URL results. There is alot after the ? in many. :/

 

Google doesn't have any problems with dynamic pages, as long as the URL doesn't have a really long string of variables or require session IDs. I don't think MSN and Yahoo have any problems with dynamic pages either.

Every thread on any forum has a question mark and they get spidered just fine. I think for vBulletin forums even the default index page has a ? at the end (with nothing after the ?).

No need to worry about that URL, Webnauts.

And I'm sorry, seo_expert, but your experience is simply incorrect. No mod_rewrite is required.

 

I did check the urls, but how many of then have PR >0. NONE

When I said Google has problem indexing I meant imparting PR to these dynamic pages. Though it does indexes them but there is no PR for most of these dynamic pages.

 

Worst case scenario the spider doesn't follow the link to the digital point page. Your page will still be indexed...

 

Sorry Minstrel, noppid- I have to disagree with you and say SEO_expert is on the right track here.

I'm not a 'expert' but I have pretty good reason to believe the following to be true:

* Search engine have difficulty following dynamic urls.
* They are getting better at it
* Google can find, follow, and index pages with upto 4 variable + session ID(maybe more haven't seen it)
* Google does not pass PR very cleanly to these pages
* Yahoo & MSN appearantly can find, follow, and index pages with up to 2 variables + session IDS
* Dynamic pages indexed by the spiders are often detrimental to a sites PR/rankings as they can be mistaken for duplicate content because a single page may be indexed many times with different session IDs giving them unique URLs each time. These sites can be and de-indexed or worse.

I would consider dynamic URLs an obstacle to any sites ability to a sites serp presence. Again, thats just my experiance.

 

So what? Worst thing that happens is that the spider can't follow the link to Shawn's site. It's already indexed anyway! That link is not for the SE's, it's for referals from real people.

 

All major engines from G -> A9 follow dynamic links no problem.

BUT usually these page are very similar like having no or the same heading etc thus they get dumped due to dup cont or not enough content.
Classics are shopping carts where there is no real distinction between products and hardly ever a detailed (per product) map.

No engine wants pages with the same title more than once!

I have a mix of both mod_rewrite and dynamic (up to two vars) both get crawled and indexed.

Who cares about PR. PR is only for entertainment nowadays. G is carefully phasing it out as an immediate stop would probably hit the US economay with thousands of SEO's and link sellers going out of buiness as they would suddenly have to disclose real value like indexed pages, visitors per page, crawl sequence per page, last cach date, etc etc etc.

Expat

 

I think expat is more on the right track here... it has to do with uniqueness of content and the amount/type of content rather than whether it's dynamic or static.

What is all this based on? And by the way, note that in my previous post I did specify that session IDs are a barrier... but it's not hard to design dynamic that don't require session IDs. The key again is not whether or not the page is dynamic or static but how the URL is constructed.

Webnauts is not going to have any problem with his URL.

 

hmm .. from my experience .. google has no problem with dynamic url but .. the dynamic url will have a lower than expected PR than a non-dynamic one.

A few examples:

Example1: forums.seochat.com

-main forum has a pr 7
-navigation bar with dynamic url which contains a "?", placed higher than the static url below, pr 4
-subcategories which is static url and placed lower than the navigation bar, pr 5

(althought this might not be statistically significant)

Compared to DP
-main forum pr6
-navigation bar with static url pr6 <---



Example 2:

http://support.invisionfree.com/index.php
-main page pr6
-all url in the top navigation bar has pr6 (except all those with a "?" in the url. they are 1 or 2 pr lower)


Example 3:

http://www.macromedia.com/support/forums/
-pr9
-dynamic category page pr4
-isnt that any is url pointed by pr9 automatically pr7 or 8?


Example 4:
www.webhostingtalk.com
-main page pr8
-category page with dynamic url, pr1(!)


The above examples may not be statistically significant, but may be used to make a hypothesis that dynamic url will receive a lower than expected pr than normal static url.

Just my 2 cent. Correct me if im wrong.

 

Since the address with your referral i.d. is not the address that is displayed in the browser, what are you worried about. A spider is not going to stop reading the content of a page just because of a question mark in the code. The spider will still follow the link on your page to Digital Point and bleed any P.R. of your page to Digital Point. My advice, is don't worry, and change your code to this <a href="http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/ad-network/?s=10508" rel="nofollow">Digital Point or whatever you want it to say</a>
Then you won't bleed your P.R.

 

That probably isn't a problem with static vs. dynamic URLs, though. My guess is the main pages all have higher PR because they have more backlinks pointing to them -- that's what PR is all about, right?

 

*sigh*

This "PR bleed" myth just will not go away...

Let me try one more time: You do NOT lose any PR from your page by linking out to another page. Period.

 

From your remark ending in "period", you are stating that is a fact. Do you have any evidence to back that statement?

Edit:
Just an added statement: If you look at the guys original question, and then look at posts offering advice, most of the replys didn't come close to what the guy was asking. Everyone answered based on the title of the post, "Search Engines & Dynamic URL for Digital Ad-Network". When the real meat of his question was, "I added an link for the Ad-Network on my pages, but it contains a question mark, which could cause problems with getting my pages spidered and indexed". It seems that most just want to write something to get there post count up, or to get rated for saying something witty or condescending. Just a thought.

 

That's like asking, "Do you have any evidence to prove that crop circles aren't caused by aliens abducting farmers?" -- show me anywhere you have found the slightest even hint of evidence that PR bleed exists.

Check back and I think you'll find that I answered it directly twice:

Page 1...

Page 2...

 

Thank you all for your kind responses. So far, so good. I will definetely keep the link of Digital Point for a while, until I recognize that my pages are not indexed properly by the 10 Top SE.

About hurting my PR, I already had thoughts about that, while I have some links of quotes of competitors, and I am using already the rel="nofollow" there.

Therefore, I would appreciate if someone can provide some evidences, if my PR could be hurt, if not using rel="nofollow" for the Digital Point link.

I need this ingo also for my Open Directory, where are links of other companies/web sites, and I do not wish to hurt my PR, which since yesterday for the first time I have 6.

After all, thanks again for your kind contribution.

 

Webnauts, stop worrying about it. The rel="nofollow" tag was invented to stop link spamming in forums or blogs, etc., so that you can prevent spiders from following those links and contributing PR to the page at the other end of the link.

The tag doesn't have any effect on preserving the PR of your page. It just stops the link on your site from providing any benefit to the other site.

And trust me on this one: PR bleed does not exist. It is worrying about nothing.