will search engines see the content of a php include, if i build my pages as header navigation and footer, will a search engine see the content of those pages that are includes?

I will try to answer you question as best I can but would be good ofr a second opinion... I know Google indexs php pages... But long php urls like this one http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=318390

google has a hard time, I think... can anyone clarify on this?

Yes, search engines always will see the same page a browser sees, because your webserver serves the spider the same html code, including any includes and/or requires.

Originally posted by Postmaster
I will try to answer you question as best I can but would be good ofr a second opinion... I know Google indexs php pages... But long php urls like this one http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=318390

google has a hard time, I think... can anyone clarify on this?

try and do a google search on
"inurl:showthread.php?s=&threadid="

and decide for yourself ;)

Whatever you see on the page when you View Source is basically the same thing search engines will see. Because your includes are processed before rendering the page in the browser, the search engines don't even realize that what you included are includes at all. All they see is what is sent to the browser. So, in other words, the search engines will see the information included using any kind of server-side includes.