how can google find me if I am inside a mysql table?

Question

I am creating a classifieds website.

Im storing all ads in mysql database, in different tables.

Is it possible to find these ads somehow, from googles search engine?

Is it possible to create meta information about each ad so that google finds them?

How does major companies do this?

I have thought about auto-generating a html-page for each ad inserted, but 500thousand auto-generated html pages doesn't really sound that good of a solution!

Any thoughts and idéas?

UPDATE: Here is my basic website so far: (ALL PHP BASED) I have a search engine which searches database for records. After finding and displaying search results, you can click on a result ('ad') and then PHP fetches info from the database and displays it, simple! In the 'put ad' section of my site, you can put your own ad into a mysql database.

I need to know how I should make google find ads in my website also, as I dont think google-crawler can search my database just because users can.

Please explain your answers more thoroughly so that I understand fully how this works!

Thank you

Answer 1

How would you normally access these classifieds? You're not just keeping them locked up in the database, are you?

Google sees your website like any other visitor would see your website. If you have a normal database-driven site, there's some unique URL for each classified where it it displayed. If there's a link to it somewhere, Google will find it.

Answer 2

If you want Google to index your site, you need to put all your pages on the web and link between them.

You do not have to auto-generate a static HTML page for everything, all pages can be dynamically created (JSP, ASP, PHP, what have you), but they need to be accessible for a web crawler.

Answer 3

Google doesn't find database records. Google finds web pages. If you want your classifieds to be found then they'll need to be on a Web page of some kind. You can help this process by giving Google a site map/index of all your classifieds.

I suggest you take a look at Google Basics and Creating and submitting SitemapsPrint . Basically the idea is to spoon feed Google every URL you want Google to find. So if your reference your classifieds this way:

http://www.mysite.com/classified?id=1234

then you create a list of every URL required to find every classified and yes this might be hundreds of thousands or even millions.

The above assumes a single classified per page. You can of course put 5, 10, 50 or 100 on a single page and then create a smaller set of URLs for Google to crawl.

Whatever you do however remember this: your sitemap should reflect how your site is used. Every URL Google finds (or you give it) will appear in the index. So don't give Google a URL that a user couldn't reach by using the site normally or that you don't want a user to use.

So while 50 classifieds per page might mean less requests from Google, if that's not how you want users to use your site (or a view you want to provide) then you'll have to do it some other way.

Just remember: Google indexes Web pages not data.

Answer 4

Google can find you no matter where you try to hide. Even if you can somehow fit yourself into a mysql table. Because they're Google. :-D

Seriously, though, they use a bot to periodically spider your site so you mostly just need to make the data in your database available as web pages on your site, and make your site bot-friendly (use an appropriate robots.txt file, provide a search engine-friendly site map, etc.) You need to make sure they can find your site, so make sure it's linked to by other sites -- preferably sites with lots of traffic.

If your site only displays specific results in response to search terms you'll have a harder time. You may want to make full lists of the records available for people without search terms (paged appropriately if you have lots of data).