How can I make my mysql database records visible to search engines?

Question

I am creating a classifieds website called 'mySite', and I want whoever searches for honda +mySite in google, to find all ads with the description 'honda' or headline 'honda' from my database.

How is this done? (a htm page for every ad? which then loads the 'ad data' when user clicks to open the htm page?)

I have an example for you to look at: www.blocket.se is a swedish site where you can buy almost anything. I am guessing they dont actually have 500thousand html pages just so that google can find them right?

Try searching this in google: blocket +bmw 330ci and you will see results from blocket.se database.

Question is: How have they done it? and how should I do it so that I have the same functionality?

Thanks

If you need more input tell me and I will update!

Answer 1

You need to have links to the (dynamically created) pages. Google doesn't know (or care) if the page is dynamically generated. But it's not going to find it if you don't have a link to it. The google bot doesn't just spam your search box looking for keywords (for obvious reasons).

For example, your homepage should link to a "latest" page, with a list of all your latest items. You should also create an archive page for every day with links to the items that were posted that day. These index pages can be dynamically generated, as long as there is a link to them from your home page.

Also, remember to cache your daily archives, and give a long value for the EXPIRES meta-tag, so you don't have to hit your database every time somebody has a look.

If you want to know more, google has a guide for web-masters: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769

In particular, look at sitemaps: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=156184

Answer 2

You need to create links to your database pages. Right now the only way to get to your pages is to use the search on your site. Google doesn't fill out form fields. So create some links to your pages.

Your pages should to be search engine friendly so

  http://site.com?q=honda+civic is bad,

  http://site.com/cars/honda/civic is good.

You can rewrite urls using your framework (you are using a web application framework right?).

You need to link to these pages preferably from other sites. You won't ever get every page in google because they are too similar and google will probably throw a lot of them out. But you need links to them to start.

Answer 3

You don't need an actual html page for every advertisement. Most of the time there is one page that looks at the url and displays content accordingly.

mysite.com/honda
mysite.com/acura
mysite.com/bmw

All of these urls would be handled by one page. The page would use the url to find what content to display and serve just that content.

Basically you're just creating a website and google does the rest

Answer 4

I create a sitemap that links to every category and every dynamic page, that way spiders can easily navigate through every url on your site.

If you do this dynamically then you can easily group by popular keywords and have a special "grouped by keyword" sitemap.

At any rate, its best to have the sitemap generated dynamically so you don't miss a single dynamic page.