[ic] Removing '?' and '&' from the URL for search engine submission, Generate Static

Fri Apr 26 21:00:00 2002

On Fri, Apr 26, 2002 at 03:34:39PM -0700, Dan Browning wrote:
> At 02:43 PM 4/26/2002 -0400, you wrote:
> >On Fri, Apr 26, 2002 at 11:00:59AM -0700, Dan Browning wrote:
> >> At 09:17 PM 4/25/2002 -0400, you wrote:
> >> >On Thu, Apr 25, 2002 at 03:45:08PM -0700, Dan Browning wrote:
> >> >> Fellow Interchangers,
> >> >>
> >> >> I recently filed a bug for the Generate Static feature (
> >> >> http://interchange.redhat.com/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=419 ).  (It is also
> >> >> pasted below).  Please comment on that if you would like.  Otherwise, 
> >I
> >> >> would like to ask what you are doing to submit sites to search engines
> >> >that
> >> >> require that '?' and '&' are not in the URL.  Are you using Static
> >> >> generation?
> >> >
> >> >I'm not convinced it's an issue.  Google doesn't seem to care, at least
> >> >for top level pages.  If you get static pages indexed, you then lose
> >> >the referer and that seems more of an issue.  We use web server
> >> >rewrites and include minivend in ssi where a client gets really
> >> >concerned about bcentral reports.  :-)
.....
> >
> >Anyway, you will probably get more out of web server rewrites over the
> >long haul.
> 
> I agree, has anyone seen a posted Rewrite regex complex enough to do what 
> we're discussing?

There are **lots** of ways to do that.  Don't get sucked into thinking
that filtering an IC page is the way to go.  Maybe.

FWIW, consider:

use DBI
for (@all_products)
  print qq`<A HREF="vlink/sku">product</A><BR>`
}

Run that from cron once a night and redirect any
robots to it rather than your catalog.  Just how will
depend on your server.

Or more sophisticated, use conditional in your top page to
send robots to that page, and provide virtual pages like
this:
http://www.mydomain.com/sku.html
served by some sort of default handler, a mini application
server if you wish.  That's really useful where you might
want to email short links.  That could be static pages, redirect
into catalog, or include catalog page as ssi.

IMCO if the typical store operator stopped worrying about search
engine optimization and spent that same energy on making the donuts
he'd come out way, way ahead.

-- 

Christopher F. Miller, Publisher                               cfm@maine.com
MaineStreet Communications, Inc           208 Portland Road, Gray, ME  04039
1.207.657.5078                                         http://www.maine.com/
Content/site management, online commerce, internet integration, Debian linux