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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Jul 2004
    Posts
    50

    mysql content and search engines

    Our website is really 3 pages; home/search page, results page & a details page. All our content is pulled from mysql. It seems that Google, yahoo etc. are NOT searching our mysql content.

    Any Ideas to have our content searchable?
    Fear not that life will end. Rather fear that it may not start.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Jun 2004
    Posts
    2,853
    What is it putting out? Like what kind of mysql content? Care to link us?

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Aug 2000
    Location
    NYC
    Posts
    6,623
    Essentially, all of your content has to reachable through a link. The flatter the structure that will allow that, the better. That is, you can't expect a search engine spider to go five or ten links deep to find all of your content. And they certainly won't get to anything that requires, for example, a query to be made through a form. URLs should be as "clean" as possible; it's a good idea to eliminate query strings.

    If all of the content is readily navigable and the site is operating properly, the fact that some or all of it is drawn from a database will make no difference -- in fact, it shouldn't even be obvious to a search engine that that's the case.

    For Google, also, you should probably using Sitemaps.
    Last edited by JayC; 10-31-2005 at 07:45 PM.
    Specializing in SEO and PPC management.

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Jul 2004
    Posts
    50
    "query to be made through a form" -- this seems to sum it up. All pages are viewable after a query. I am going to read this Google sitemaps (thank you).

    What does Amazon do will all their data? We are going to need to do something to get the great content, which truly is our site, on those search engines, but how?

    Thank you both, this is a great start.
    Fear not that life will end. Rather fear that it may not start.

  5. #5
    Is it possible for you to generate content into html static pages?

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Sep 2002
    Location
    Forest, Ohio USA
    Posts
    47
    Are you on Windows or Unix. You need to look into some URL rewriting. If you are on Unix, do a search for mod_rewrite.
    WebFire Solutions

  7. #7
    You need something like RewriteEngine.

    Here is my search engine site with search engine friendly URLs.
    http://www.2-seek.com

    Notice the difference between the links though they are the same and return the same results.
    http://www.2-seek.com/search/web hosting
    http://www.2-seek.com/search.php?REQ=web hosting

    Also on a side note to make less work for your server you can cache the output so you don't have to query the DB every time a user visits your site.
    Last edited by jleecong; 11-02-2005 at 03:41 PM.

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