PHP pages and Search Engines
 

I am working on some new sites which I am hoping to optimize for SEs and I was wondering how much does it effect ranking by using PHP pages? I know in the past some SEs preffered pure HTML but wasn't sure how much it has changed.

I think they can get the same rank as the HTMLs one

it doesnt matter.


there ive contributed my bit for the community this month. also, for november as well.

back to trolling.

good question!

change your server so it interprets php in .html pages :)

Look at your pages the way a spider see's them....and if you don't know how, I'm sorry for you :winkwink:

I have done sites in both striaght HTML and others in straight PHP. Both seem to rank about the same in the search engines.

It doesn't matter whether the files are ending with .HTML or .PHP.

However, if you use some tool like for example mod_rewrite, you could manipulate all the urls to make them as search friendly as possible. No need to have file endings at all. Examples:

domain.com
domain.com/categoryname
domain.com/categoryname/girlname
domain.com/categoryname/girlname/setname

If done properly you get a great link structure which pays off with the SE's.

doesn't matter. the only thing those spiders look at is what is ON the page. and the best way to optimize it in a structured sense is through xhtml/CSS and not using tables for layout.

To answer your question, while PHP is not listed among the supported documents on Google's list: http://www.google.com/webmasters/facts.html (see last fact), it is definitely supported and I don't see any types of penalties being imposed for it. The best example to compare this is to go to http://www.php.net

The whole site is powered on PHP and both its results in the SERP's and its PR show that php is fully supported.

WG

SEs like to see CSS instead of tables?

This works very well. Its also a good way to learn about seperating modules and templates by using MVC with php.

Thanks for all the info guys!

works just as well as HTML...

i haven't done much research on it. but i don't believe engines "SEE CSS", but they see the simplicity of the site. css (less coding, more simplistic) is a lot more direct and to the point - which i believe can help in positioning. i have to do more research though to really be conclusive.

Try to avoid using ? type commandline variables.

www.somedomain.com/somescript/variable1/variable2
is always better than
www.somedomain.com/somescript.php?variable1=...&variable2=...

Some spiders may be reluctant to follow obviously dynamic links. Just be careful that they don't get stuck in a loop, trying out 69,891,627 combinations of your variables.