Redirecting, search engine unfriendly?

Anon

Hi guys,
just wondering if anyone knew anything about this.
If I have redirect headers in my pages for when a URL comes in bearing invalid vars like this, www.site.com/index.php?db_var=invalid_val

You know like when pages get moved or people tamper with the URL.

Is this seen as a penalty incurring practice for search engines?

I'm gonna do it anyway but I just wondered 😉

Nick

scottd

theres a great article at webmonkey all about search engines by someone who seems to know quite a lot.

Some engines don't look at URL's with "?" in them...others do.

As for having a header() script in you rpage...it won't do your listing any good thats for sure since engines look for content on each page as well as meta tags, titles, etc.

Perhaps a way around this is to do this:

<?php
if($var == "blah blah) {
header("blah");
}
?>

This way if an engine looks at your page it will still see all the content but if a user comes along with a bad var they'll be redirected away.

scottd