Thought I'd check in with everyone on the latest thoughts for link directory pages that are "virtural." In other words instead of creating physical pages, one can simply have a sitemap page that links to the same page with variables attached. Much like these forums work. The advantage is that you don't have to manage hundreds of pages. The downside is that historically, virtual pages weren't treated as kindly as truely unique pages (page.asp?id=x versus x.html) by Google.

What are everyone's thoughts on this? It's very tempting to create a link directory system based off of variables but I wonder if google will see /affiliates.asp?id=1 as a unique page and give it as much credit as /affiliates.asp?id=2. Or more importantly, if those pages will do as well as affilates_1.html and affilates_2.html.

I actually care about the quality of my directory pages because believe it or not they actually DO draw in traffic on their own!

In esssence is it worth the extra work to create and maintain real pages? I've seen a lot of variable driven directories where none of the pages are cached, but in other cases they are. Hence the confusion.

crikey, don't use the word affiliates...

Seriously though, it should be fine and it's THE way to go. Use a database and use it well!

If you start having more than one variable (although technically 3 are fine) then you should consider mod_rewrite

Take a look at my property investment directory and one of it's deep links - ooh, lets say Landlord and Property Management Tools just because you're on it. The url you click on is http://www.pcpropertymanager.com/wsn91_1display.html

That's driven by a single index.php file which is passed a variety of parameters. My .htaccess file gets the page name: http://www.pcpropertymanager.com/wsn91_1display.html and decodes it to category 19 and page 1.

My program is happy because it knows what to do but my pages look static.

Sarah

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Sarah is exactly right IMO....
Sometimes people are hesitant to link with a page that does that... Maybe try to "Mod Rewrite" it into HTML pages... that way it's easy for you and looks good to everyone...
Kid tested, mother approved!

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The mod rewrite sounds real good. I'll take a look around and see if it can be incorporated in .asp AND .aspx....

Thanks for the idea! Now to find a kid to test this on...

It certainly can be incorporated into asp and aspx however it is no longer mod_rewrite as this is an appache module, what you need is the Isapi module (Small fee) you can get it here http://www.isapirewrite.com/
Let us know if you need help with it

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You could also create static asp pages...embed the variable into each page manually and then use a DB on the backend to retrieve the data.

I couldn't seem to get the asp rewrite to work on my server...I don't think I have the permissions to install it....I'm virtually hosted...any suggestions?

Any opinions on using the rewrite after the dynamic pages have been indexed...will they look like dupes?

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