Search engine index on a redirect page?

[Tim_L]

I've got a page which has a PHP redirect at the top:

header("location:http://domain.com/page.php"); ?>

Below that there is content which I'd like to be indexed by the search engine but when the user goes to that page I'd like it to redirect to the relevant page.

My question is:

Will the search engine index the content below the redirect or will it go to the page in the redirect code and not give a second look at the content on the page? If this is so - is there a way to it?

Thanks...

[paulnaj]

I don't really see how it could be done.

The header() function only works if NO other headers are sent. But, in order for the search engine to index anything on the page, the page MUST return a header which, obviously can't be the re-direct header.

I don't have a definitive answer, though.

[Tim_L]

But, in order for the search engine to index anything on the page, the page MUST return a header which

Thanks for the reply! How else coul I retur a header for the SE?

[superwormy]

Search engines generally will obey the same rules as a regular browser, so NO, the serach engine will not index this page.

You shouldnt' be trying to trick search engines.

[Tim_L]

Well to explain generally - I'd like to use mod-rewrite on the apache server to create directory paths but that seems to be quite involved and complicated. So instead I'm manually creating a site tree of my dynamic links so that the search engines will find them. I really have no intention of spamming / tricking the SEs. The re-direct was just so that if a user found that page, then it would redirect to the main page which would be more useful for them. However, I've removed the redirect now.

[superwormy]

ForceType might be a simpler option than mod_rewrite for creating directory paths out of ?querystrings.

<FilesMatch "^{your_file_name$">}
ForceType application/x-httpd-php
</FilesMatch>

Anything the requests http://www.domainname.com/your_file_name/var1/value1/var2/value2 will load the file /your_file_name, then you just need to parse out the values, which is pretty simple.

explode() everything after /your_file_name by /, even array keys are REQUEST keys, odd array keys are the values that correspond to those REQUEST keys. If that made any sense...

[Tim_L]

Originally posted by superwormy
...If that made any sense...

Not really - you lost me after "Forcetype"!! 🙁

Would this be something a newbie like me could realistically pull off easily? It would help a lot in SE rankings etc...

[superwormy]

Yes a newb could pull it off.

Here I'll try an elaborate... if you need more help catch me on AIM screen name Superwormy or email me, [e-mail]

Make an .htaccess file in the directory you want to use this in. In it, put the following:

<FilesMatch "^{your_file_name$">}
ForceType application/x-httpd-php
</FilesMatch>

Now, make a file called your_file_name WITHOUT an extension and put it in that same directory. That file is going to be treated by Apache ( assuming you have the right permissions with Apache ) as a PHP file. You can put any PHP code you want in it.

If you request:
www.your_domain_name.com/your_file_name/this/should/be/the/query/string

And print_r ($_SERVER); you'll find that one of the varialbes ( REQUEST_URI I think ) will return /your_file_name/this/should/be/the/query/string for its value.

So next you strip away the /your_file_name with str_replace() or with substr() or something, so you're left with this:

this/should/be/the/query/string

Now, you need to explode() that string into an array.

$array = explode ("/", $that_string);

So now you get this for an array:

array (
0 => this
1 => should
2 => be
3 => the
4 => query
5 => string
)

Now you want to loop through that array and build another array, if the key to the array element is EVEN ( $key % 2 returns 0 ) then that is a KEY for the new array, and $key + 1 is it's value.

So you'd get this final resulting array:

array (
this => should
be => the
query => string
)

Now, if we'd have actually used variables...

/your_file_name/variable1/value1/variable2/value2

We would get this for a final array:

array (
variable1 => value1
variable2 => value2
)

So there you have it, a query string that looks like a directory.