google

I have read that google will not cache pages containing links that contain query strings with symbols like $ = ?. My question is does this forum software use query strings to pass data? Also does it generate a new static html page for every post. My main reason for these questions is to make sure that my forums will get picked up by google if I use this software.

Thanks,
Kenny Salter
www.TurboTabGuitar.Com

We have a SE friendly URL conversion feature that will help you with search engine visibility. For example, the URL for this thread is http://www.aspplayground.net/forum/m_386995/tm.htm without those symbols you mentioned.

And no, the software uses the technique described here http://www.aspplayground.net/forum/m_381836/tm.htm and does not generate static HTML page for every post.

For example, if you search the keyword "Search Engine Friendly URL", the above post is in the first page returned by Google:

http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=Search+Engine+Friendly+URL&btnG=Search&meta=

Or "trouble shooting 101"

http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=Trouble+shooting+101&btnG=Search&meta=

As you can see, our technique does help with SE visibility.

I was doing some reading on this and came across the following update from google:

Does Google index dynamic pages?
The Google index includes dynamically generated webpages, including .asp pages, .php pages, and pages with question marks in their URLs. However, these pages can cause problems for our crawler and may be ignored. If you’re concerned that your dynamically generated pages are being ignored, you may want to consider creating static copies of these pages for our crawler. If you do this, please be sure to include a robots.txt file that disallows the dynamic pages in order to ensure that these pages are not seen as having duplicate content.

For additional information, please visit the webmaster section of our site at http://www.google.com/webmasters/. Also, you may want to comb http://groups.google.com/groups?q=google.public.support.general for suggestions from our users and webmasters or to post a question of your own.
http://www.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=470&topic=357