Fake HTML vs. Static HTML - Do search engines know?

[strum4life]

I think a common myth among SEO enthusiasts is that you can fool search engines into believing fake HTML pages are static html pages. While it's true that you can make database driven pages *look* like static HTML pages with Apache handlers and other methods, I don't believe the search engines are fooled.

For instance, this looks like a static HTML page, but of course it's not:
http://www.entertainment-news.org/br...your-ipod.html

Here's a static HTML page:
http://www.dietplans4u.org/lowfat.html

Do the search engines know the difference? I say YES because I've always been able to generate much higher rankings with static HTML when compared to fake HTML. I don't know how they know the difference, but perhaps someone can enlighten me. I believe there's a way to tell if a page actually exists on the server or if it's just a mask to a dynamic page.

You can actually still fool the search engines, but it takes more time. First create a static HTML page, and then in your .htaccess file, put this code:

<Files *.html>
	ForceType application/x-httpd-php
</Files>

<Files *.htm>
	ForceType application/x-httpd-php
</Files>

This code forces Apache to read HTML pages as PHP. Your HTML page will actually exist, and now you can place PHP code within static HTML pages.

[jestep]

Unless there are ?,#,& etc operators in the url, I don't think that SE's can tell if the page is dynamic. I have sites that use both and the ranking difficulty doesn't seem to matter by the page type. We actually have more pages rank well that are dynamic, but are made to look static.

[Mel]

Search engines have only the html that the spiders feed them to rank pages on, they do not know (or care) if they were generated by man or machine.

The only real differences IMO between the end result of dynamic or static pages are that the URLs of dynamic pages may be much more convoluted unless they are "fixed" and that it is easy to generate thousands dynamic pages.

[Faglork]

Originally Posted by strum4life

Do the search engines know the difference? I say YES because I've always been able to generate much higher rankings with static HTML when compared to fake HTML. I don't know how they know the difference, but perhaps someone can enlighten me. I believe there's a way to tell if a page actually exists on the server or if it's just a mask to a dynamic page.

I operate a large regional portal site. The "directory" part is static HTML (some hundred pages) generated 4 times a day to reflect the changes. The site also has a "newspaper" which is database-driven, the PHP being rewritten through mod_rewrite into .html

Google spiders both sites (different urls) several times a day. There is almost NO difference - submitted newspaper articles show after about two days with good ranking in Google.

You can actually still fool the search engines, but it takes more time. First create a static HTML page, and then in your .htaccess file, put this code:

<Files *.html>
	ForceType application/x-httpd-php
</Files>

<Files *.htm>
	ForceType application/x-httpd-php
</Files>

This code forces Apache to read HTML pages as PHP. Your HTML page will actually exist, and now you can place PHP code within static HTML pages.

This makes absolutely no difference. You can call your .html pages .fronz or your .php programs .zzz, if you want. The real difference between parsed (processed) pages and static html is that static html pages have a last_modified information added by the server. See
http://www.faqts.com/knowledge_base/...id/4674/fid/51
for explanation and workaround.


SEs *could* use last_modified to identify processed pages, but since this is easy to manipulate, I doubt that they do.

hth,
Alex

[clasione]

I think strum4life brings up a good point...

I do feel that se's value actual human envolvment more than dynamically driven pages....

The only question is:

Is there a full proof way for them to identify mod-rewrite?

[Faglork]

Originally Posted by clasione

I do feel that se's value actual human envolvment more than dynamically driven pages....

Hrrrmm. Just because a website is database-driven, it does not follow that there is no human involvement. We operate a "digital newspaper" which takes *much* involvement, believe me. It would just be plain impossible to operate it without a couple of databases under the hood.


On the other hand, it is possible to simply generate absolutely senseless, worthless STATIC HTML pages out of a database - just look at all those link farms. No SE is able to see any difference, just from a look at the files.

Originally Posted by clasione

The only question is:

Is there a full proof way for them to identify mod-rewrite?

The only quuestion is whether it affects your page in the SERPs. I have no evidence of that. I have never seen a robot not spidering or lesser spidering my pages because of mod_rewrite. And I have never seen a drop in the SERPs. Most of the re-designs I do incorporate mod_rewrite, and in literally ALL cases the websites ranked better afterwards.

Since rewriting is one of the basic mechanisms for webmasters and very widely used, I do not think that SEs are bothered by that.

Alex