Dynamic vs Static web Pages

How Dynamic Web Pages Rank in Search Engines Compared to Static Web Pages

The internet used to consist solely of HTML or static web pages, i.e., web pages that are not changed before being displayed in a web browser. However, now dynamic web pages are the norm because there is software that is available that changes the page before it is displayed in a web browser, like a counter that displays a different number each time the page is displayed or information specifically for your particular browser or when you search for an item in a database. Those pages are not actually set up as HTML and thus the search engines will never see the contents that are displayed in the browser.

This article will explain the differences between dynamic web pages vs static web pages and why dynamic web pages can't be indexed in the search engines.

Dynamic pages

In order to generate dynamic pages it requires a script program such as ASP, PHP or CMF to generate instructions to call up and construct the dynamic pages after the surfer inputs some data in a search program. Dynamic pages often use characters in their URL which prevent the search engines from reading and indexing the data on that page, i.e., "&id=". They also often utilize Session IDs in the URLs which, if not properly written, will prevent search engines from following links on that page (or cause an inflated page count) and those pages don't gain PR (Page Rank) from Google either (don't submit your website to dynamic pages unless thay are passing PR). There are ways of getting around this but it requires special software and extra time to do it which raises expenses for the client. Dynamic web pages can be used in a catalog or database (as long as these products are also displayed in static pages) but they should never be used on the main pages of the website. You can find more info on session IDs on WebMasterWorld's forum: Can Google crawl ASPX pages?

Static Pages

Static pages are already established and are not drawn up from bits and pieces from a search query. Until recently search engines could not surf dynamic pages and thus items on such sites were not listed in search engines but today some search engines, like Google and Yahoo, are able to do so. However it takes longer for them to index all the data and if you have set up similar static pages it can cause supplemental results penalties unless one or the other has a noindex meta tag on it.

Databases

Most large e-commerce sites produce product pages from their databases that are dynamic pages. You can recognize a dynamic URL because it will have question marks, equal signs and ampersands in it which tells the database management software which item to draw up in the page as it loads. They don't actually have these pages set up on their site, they are called up (dynamically generated) from their database as you request information in a form. These dynamic pages may not produce any PR (position rank in Google) because Google only attributes PR to static pages.

Dynamic Pages to HTML

Dynamic pages can be turned into static pages so the search engines will list the pages but here again you need to be concerned with duplicate content penalties (supplemental results) or you can also ban the search engine from the database version via the robots.txt file. You also need to consider if this technology, and it's problems, is compatible with your designing budget. See also: other technology blockers.

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