Dynamic pages and code within content

[tgraham]

Hi all,

I'm considering creating a dynamic table on my site that highlights rows / columns and cells depending on buttons that users can click.  Each cell in the table links to a separate page that is created dynamically pulling information from a database.

Now I'm aware of the google 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."

So we wondered whether we could put the dynamic pages in our sitemap so that google could index them - the pages can be seen with javascript off which is how the pages are manipulated to make them dynamic.

Could anyone give us a overview of the dangers here?

I also wondered if you still need to separate content from code on a page? My developer still seems very keen to use inline CSS and javascript!

Thanks a bundle.

[tgraham]

That's it! Thanks Baptiste - the anchor text is going to be an image and an unoptimised image at that... I knew there was a reason that my brain was kicking up a fuss with this code.  Brilliant, thanks.

[baptisteplace]

If you have pages on your site without any internal link to them (I mean pages reachable by Google Bot when he visits your site), they won't rank well, and your site won't be ranking well too.

That's because your pages will only be visible to Google through the sitemap. The Google Bot will think "Hey these pages are not accessible to the user through the site links? I should not rank them then."

You will penalize your whole domain too because you will be losing additional pages in the site. Especially if those pages have good content (I suppose this the case anyway).

BUT, given your example, Google Bot should be able to access them with you strange link. Question is, what is the anchor text ? Is the anchor a generic text or a good keyword for each page? If you have bad anchor text, I would make a specific section on the site which allows the user and GBot to access theses pages with good anchor text.

Maybe a HTML sitemap, as you may see one on rotten tomatoes :

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/sitemap/movies

[tgraham]

Ok, thanks so much for the advice, just to clarify there is a link to the dynamic page and it's address will be permanent so it can be accessed in the browser address bar. Here is the link example that the developer gave:

[If I understand correctly you are saying that this dynamic page can't rank? Even if it is permanently there?

Is that right?](Index.asp?Page=ExamplePage)

[Goetzman]

agreed, ref=canonical

[TellThemEverything]

I would rel=canonical all versions of the page to point to one without querystring. You only want one page to be indexed.

I would also (sorry) reconsider your ties with a developer who wants to use inline CSS. That is just dumb...

[baptisteplace]

I would not recommend doing so, google will index you pages but he won't be able to find them anywhere on the internet, event on your website. They won't rank.

You should make, at least, a way for users and google to access theses pages without the buttons.

For the code / content / style issue, you should really stop putting all together - it's been 10 years since people started to separate content and style