I'm trying to setup a small parts database that can be indexed by
search engines. I have the database in place and a php page that
performs the lookup and displays the results. The site itself has
search engine optimization enabled and working properly. What I don't
understand is:

1. How does the search engine search the database? Is this automatic
at the next crawl?

2. How to make the dynamic page display when I search for a part in an
internet search engine.

If anyone can point in the right direction I would greatly appreciate
it.

Thanks
Paul

coffeyp@gmail.com wrote:

I'm trying to setup a small parts database that can be indexed by
search engines. I have the database in place and a php page that
performs the lookup and displays the results. The site itself has
search engine optimization enabled and working properly. What I don't
understand is:
>
1. How does the search engine search the database? Is this automatic
at the next crawl?

Google doesn't know anything about your database. It only knows about
documents that appear on the Web.

>
2. How to make the dynamic page display when I search for a part in an
internet search engine.

The only way a search engine can display your page with the data for a
particular part is if there is already a link somewhere that leads to
that page with that data, and the engine has to find that link. The link
has to contain the information necessary for the page to figure out
which product to display. There isn't any way to get the search engine
to use forms on your site or simulate their use. It can only follow links.

The starting point is to give your page a way to check whether the
request came with extra path information/query string data that
identifies the product its supposed to show, and then use that instead
of looking for data from a form. This is beyond the scope of this
newsgroup, and depends on the server-side technology you're using (ASP,
PHP, Perl, CGI, etc.).

>
If anyone can point in the right direction I would greatly appreciate
it.
>
Thanks
Paul
>

Harlan Messinger wrote:

Google doesn't know anything about your database. It only knows about
documents that appear on the Web.

Google (approximately) not only "only knows about documents on the web"
but it also only knows about those documents that are linked to from
documents it already knows.

If you build a database-driven site, then (these days) there's no
reason at all why it won't be indexed by search engines. However you
need to provide a navigation path to all the relevant pages through
simple <alinks, not just through search boxes or JavaScript. If you
provide some "list of everything" sitemap pages then that shoudl do
the trick, even if the humans never use them.