Search engine robots and PHP/MySQL

Anon

I have a database driven site where the title, the content include, and other elements are pulled from a MySQL database, based on a variable in the page's URL. I was concerned that search engine robots would not read the title or the content of the included file and give it a low ranking.

I did a test with a free link-checker called Xenu (available on download.com). As far as I understand, Xenu is very similar to a search engine robot.

I ran the program and all of the pages were listed properly with their titles and embedded links checked. It appears as though Xenu correctly pulled the information from the database.

Could anyone tell me if this is an accurate testing method or recommend another way to test how search engine robots behave with database driven sites?

I read: http://www.phpbuilder.com/columns/tim19990117.php3 which discusses search engine robots and database driven sites, but I'd like to avoid altering Apache.

van__

I suggest trial and error.
Each search engine is different, none are the same. So the only way to see how successfull your indexing will be is if you actively submit pages to engines and then search for them in their database a week or two later. This will inform you wich engines don't like seeing '?'s is URLs and other items that indicate a dynamic site.

Anon

http://www.evolt.org/article/Search_Engine_Friendly_URLs_with_PHP_and_Apache/17/15049/index.html

van__

I think you missed the point.

The topic here was about not using a portal like URL and still getting search engine indexing to occur optimally (or as optimally as possible) with a query string attached.
The orignal poster here has already stated that they have seen articles that describe the feature you linked but were not wanting to use that method.

And as I stated in my reply, there is really no gaurantee on what engines will and which will not index a URL with a query string.

But, yes, directory mimic URLs are the way to go. But, as I said, that is not the solution we are working with here.