html vs php

[weegillis]

Like deepsand said, the extension has no bearing on the matter, only the document itself goes under the scope. As such, the only thing a robot sees is what is tied to the document on the client side. It never sees the PHP, or other server side templates and logic.

[LD]

It never sees the PHP, or other server side templates and logic.

Sorry if I'm hijacking the thread, but if the contents of the PHP file are generated from records on a database on the server, unless the bot can invoke the query, which I don't think it can, it will only see the PHP document on the server before the query to populate the pages - correct?

[technokraft]

Ofcourse, html or php has no difference on Google or other search engine. I did SEO for my personal company website Technocraft Pakistan [ technokraft.net ], although it is designed in joomla, but due to search engine friendly text, links, h1 to h6 tags used, directory submission, blogs and forum submission, as well as taking backlinks from high PR sites mimimum 5 to 6, can take your site up. and it was done in my site and now it has PR3 on Google in just 2 months.

[deepsand]

Sorry if I'm hijacking the thread, but if the contents of the PHP file are generated from records on a database on the server, unless the bot can invoke the query, which I don't think it can, it will only see the PHP document on the server before the query to populate the pages - correct?

That's not unique to PHP.

More importantly, that holds true for any content that is external to the file in question, content that is only displayed when the page is rendered. So, the question becomes one of to what extent does any SE attempt to retrieve dynamic content.

With respect to Google, see, among others, http://googlewebmastercentral.blogsp...atic-urls.html and http://www.google.com/support/forum/...0b6db491&hl=en .

[LD]

So, the question becomes one of to what extent does any SE attempt to retrieve dynamic content. With respect to Google, see, among others, http://googlewebmastercentral.blogsp...atic-urls.html and http://www.google.com/support/forum/...0b6db491&hl=en .

I agree - PHP, ASP etc can look odd when looking under the hood at the un-rendered page code. From the article I gather that the unrenderd page is not unlike a template and only takes shape once the page renders with the content pulled from the database for that specific page. But what I didn't get from the article is how or even if the page content (which resides the database untill the database calls are made) can be crawled, since the content is all tucked away in database records. Once the page is queried, the database calls are made, the page renders and voila, it looks great.

I do some maintenance coding in ASP and some PHP and know what the source code of those pages look like. I just can't get my head this from an indexing stand point.

[deepsand]

I don't want go too far off topic but I also heard that flash is not good for SEO. Is this true?

See Google indexes Flash and other rich media files types.

For most users, though, Flash sucks, as it does not respond to input devices, i.e. keyboard, mouse, touch screen, touch pad, etc., as do standard code types.

[deepsand]

I agree - PHP, ASP etc can look odd when looking under the hood at the un-rendered page code. From the article I gather that the unrenderd page is not unlike a template and only takes shape once the page renders with the content pulled from the database for that specific page. But what I didn't get from the article is how or even if the page content (which resides the database untill the database calls are made) can be crawled, since the content is all tucked away in database records. Once the page is queried, the database calls are made, the page renders and voila, it looks great.

I do some maintenance coding in ASP and some PHP and know what the source code of those pages look like. I just can't get my head this from an indexing stand point.

Perhaps something from the following will help.

http://www.google.com/search?sourcei...index+database

[bmservice]

nothing do with html or php,all depends on the content of your site.

[LD]

Perhaps something from the following will help.

http://www.google.com/search?sourcei...index+database

Thanks - I think I get it. I was thinking "event" - something that invokes a script and pulls the info from the database. For users, it's a "mouse over", "on click" type event on a link that causes the scripts to run and make database calls. So does the bot cause an "event" like action which invokes the scripts that pulls the data from the db - and then is able to crawl and index the page?

[deepsand]

So does the bot cause an "event" like action which invokes the scripts that pulls the data from the db - and then is able to crawl and index the page?

Generally done via URL parms.

There remains, however, a very, very large "dark" web, most likely much bigger than that known to SEs.