Do search engines read/apply get variables?

Question

Lets say we have index.php with the following links.

<a href="index.php?page=home">Home></a>
<a href="index.php?page=contact">Contact</a>

Followed by the following dynamic content...

<div id="content">
  <?php inlclude "./content/" . $_GET['page'] . ".php"; ?>
</div>

I am in the process of creating my own light weight CMS and i'm wondering if search engines will crawl through these links with the get variables and pull/index the content. I also plan on controlling my meta-content in a similar fashion.

Do Search Engines read/apply get variables?

At least in Google, you can add [parameter handling](http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=147959) — CappY, Feb 25 '11 at 01:23
Yes, they'll see them as different pages. Since the page is rendered on your server before it's sent to the crawler, the dynamic content isn't an issue. — drudge, Feb 25 '11 at 01:23

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 25 '11 at 01:22

1

They surely will. Else they'd miss most of the dynamic content on the web not using nice urls ;)

answered Feb 25 '11 at 01:22

Czechnology

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On a sidenote, there's an interesting article on duplicate contents that can happen easily with GET vars: http://www.toprankblog.com/2010/01/search-engines-url-variables/ – Czechnology Feb 25 '11 at 01:26

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 25 '11 at 01:24

Search engines will scan a webpage for hyperlinks and store any unique locations that they come across. index.php is a different location than index.php?q=home is a different location than index.php?q=about.

Unless of course you've told the search engines not to scan that page with a robots.txt file.

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 25 '11 at 01:26

Back in the early days of search engines, the answer was no. Nowadays search engines are smarter and are for the most part able to differentiate pages even with the same root pagename.

However, it will definitely be better to use a RESTful application design, and that will entail using mod_rewrite or some other technique to make your URLs more transparent. Given that you're in the planning stages of creating the CMS, I would definitely read up on how to implement REST in your program, avoiding the problem entirely.

Do search engines read/apply get variables?

3 Answers3