Someone recently told me,
"In the past, Google never indexed PHP pages".
I don’t believe that for several reasons. But I’m no SEO expert, or even a novice, so I wonder. Before I file that person under “unreliable”, I thought I’d ask the SO community: Is there anything to that?
Thanks.
The trouble with indexing dynamic pages was the use of long nasty query string urls: www.example.com/somepage.php?lol=23423423&lol2=25235 and so on. Google never didn't index them per se, but it certainly wasn't very effective in doing so. SEO techniques, like URL rewriting, only enhanced searchability and indexability.
Ridiculous, some argue (correctly) that google tends to favor static content because it rarely changes, but I'm not sure how true that is anymore.
Get it from the horses mouth:
See: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/09/dynamic-urls-vs-static-urls.html
Also, it is true, Javascript generated content (or content pulled by Ajax), is completely ignored.
Google doesn't care what kind of page you have, if it can access it, it will index it. The exception is Javascript, which the googlebot doesn't evaluate.
Here are some counter-examples: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=inurl:.php+page&btnG=Search
No, this has never been true.
Well, it is definitely not entirely correct, since wordpress blogs generate tons of SEO and are written in PHP.
That said, this person is likely relying incomplete information and making a statement about dynamic pages and calling it PHP. If >any< page happens to have the right HTTP headers set, it will prevent it from getting indexed well.
Some other posters also pointed out that using nasty query strings in URLS can hamper SEO as well, but again, you don't have to use dynamic URLS with your php site! See wordpress, again.
SEO is a black art, there's a lot to it. I'd be suspect of any blanket statement made about SEO as there is almost guaranteed to be some edge case which doesn't fit.
Like almost all pieces of bad information, there's a truth that drives this missive.
First of all - no - Google or any search bot doesn't explicitly ignore pages with a specific extension, PHP or otherwise.
Secondly, search bots like the GoogleBot are really complex, fickle creatures. There are so many dimensions and factors on which a page is weighed & measured that there's no any one thing that is so much more influential than another. Other users here have already pointed out the issue of SEO in relation to exactly how dynamic the content on the page is.
Well, you can't get a php page, you can only get the results of executing it. Then, consider what a search engine would do with a page that's different every time it's retrieved, especially if it ranks by the number of times the same result is linked to.
Very, very long time ago, the Google didn't index "deep web" pages with parameters passed by GET (in URL). But that's ancient history, now Google is capable of indexing them, and most dynamic frameworks generate "friendly" URLs anyway.
Mmm, SEO chinese-telephone folklore. I swear half of the nonsense 'SEO technologists' do is based on either errors of attribution, like this one, or on the indexing practices of AltaVista in 1996.
Actually, I think "Google never indexed PHP pages" is absolutely a true statement. Google doesn't have access to the PHP code, so it can't index it. Google also doesn't index Java, Ruby, Perl, Python, or any other backend code.
Google only indexes output, it doesn't matter what generated that output. Google can't even tell what type of language generated the page (although it can guess by the extension). You could easily change Apache to treat all files ending in .asp as PHP files.
I think it is very hard to tell.
If you think it can, then how could it treat the content that retrieve differently every time? And if it can do this, there are lot of space for SEO cheaters.
If you do not think it can index PHP, then do not you think it little bit outdated for Googlebot?
My conclusion is that, if you can, try your best not use dynamic content.
Sorry, I found my post is useless now!