Google and Dynamic URLs

Posted on February 12, 2007

Yet another Matt Cutts video. This one talks about how Google ranks (and passes ranks to, from and throughout) dyanmically generated web pages versus static urls. Matt also briefly discuses the use of parameters and session IDs - the do and do not - to using them. This was a huge concern of mine when I first started setting up to make money with my ebay affiliate stores. I was a little worried that Google would never index or pass rank to those pages.

Even though the ebay affiliate script programmer assured me that my pages would be indexed, the latest Google update was what really convinced me. Matt’s video explains why they get indexed and now have page rank.

NOTE: There’s a huge hint in this video about making your dynamic pages appear to be static pages to the googlebot. This is something I’ve been preaching to people for the past two years and is one of the most often overlooked feature of WordPress to the uninitiated - permalink structure.

The latter part of this video Matt discusses geo-targeting sites (something that’s been very hot this past 12 months) and whether Google penalizes those sites as the varying bots may consider these sites to be cloaked (a black-hat no-no). If you have a site that serves up geo-targeted content and you’re concerned that you’re being sandboxed or black-listed, Matt tells you how to fix the communication problem between your content and the googlebot in the last two minutes.

If you’re still confused over cloaking, parameters and google - jump into this next video around the 2 minutes 30 seconds mark.

Finally, if you have any idea or personal preferance to share on the Ginger vs. Marianne selection, leave me a note would you? (Watch the video to make sense of that question if you can! Careful though, you’ll be showing your age!)

’till later,

Laura Childs

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