Will Google and Yahoo cache (list) pages with the following elements ??
or will g and y penalize the pages ?

?, &, %, +, =, $, cgi-bin, .cgi


Thanks

__________________
Bay Area Real Estate | Free MLS. Coming to CA and like to know Things to do in California.

It likes ? & = although it prefers fewer than 3 parameters and if it gets a snif of a session id it's outa there

it indexes on cgi-bin: http://www.google.com/search?q=allinurl%3Acgi-bin
and cgi http://www.google.com/search?q=allinurl:cgi&start=10

I'm not sure about the % and the $

Sarah

__________________
█ How to Survive and Prosper in a falling property market
█ RealState for Real Estate - Directory
█ Property Management Broker

Google indexes more than people think. I know that the % sign gets indexed, because in the past, I've coded pages that accidentally had blank spaces in them, and that was interpreted as %20 , in the URL. Google cached it, and gave it rank as well.

__________________
Houses for Rent at rentspeed.com!

Rental Homes at rentspeed.com!

I'm sure Google can index more than it commits to indexing, but is it wise or ethical to rely on that? I'd consider it a bonus - and if I've got a page I want indexed I want certainty

Sarah

__________________
█ How to Survive and Prosper in a falling property market
█ RealState for Real Estate - Directory
█ Property Management Broker

IT is always best to mod rewrite your URL's to eliminate all variables, although SE's can parse them, they do so with much more difficulty and the effeciency of getting your site spidered is much lower.

Theoretically can they parse all your pages? Yes
Will they: no

__________________
Webmasters who spend their energies upholding the spirit of the basic principles [Of Google] will provide a much better user experience and subsequently enjoy better ranking than those who spend their time looking for loopholes they can exploit. Google.com

I wholeheartedly agree with the webmaster here. The less variables, ampersands, percentage signs, and question marks you have in your URL, the more google-friendly your page will be.

I'm a big supporter of rewriting URLs to make them more search engine friendly. Beware - There are some people that don't understand this stuff and won't link to you unless you have a "static" "htm" page.

* rolls eyes *

__________________
Houses for Rent at rentspeed.com!

Rental Homes at rentspeed.com!