Building dynamic links trade page

This might not be the right place to post, but, here goes...

I wrote a Perl script that builds a page from a file that stores link trading partners. This makes it easy to add and change the entries. But, when I add a new entry, I simply save the generated HTML as that and move that to my server. I do this because I believe that a dynamically generated page will not be seen by the search engines, since it does not really exist. Or does it?

Do they index based on the URL, or text that exists (the HTML), or do they actually execute the URL similar to how a browser would? I hope I am stating this correctly.

Thanks,
-tdavis

The search engines see the HTML just like anyone else, so it does exist.

Some people might question the URL, such as: www.mysite.com/page.php?p=1&id=1234

But that does not really pose a problem for the search engines.

If there is really concern over that, "rewrite rules" can be made using .htaccess
to keep your URL's in line.

In your case, the web page might be "index.php", and using PHP scripting, the
page would be dynamic without any "odd" URL's ... so it wouldn't make a difference.

Thanks. That is good news. I guess I never really understood how the search engines go about doing what they do. So if my links page is linkspage.cgi?category=webdesign, and that script builds a page dynamically, then the search engine will be accessing that page being built. Cool! Thanks for your help!

You have to remember one thing though...

The content of a dynamic page changes.
This affects the keywords, etc. that are matched against content.

One day, things match, another day, they don't

I'm guessing a page with changing content will not rank well.

unless the keywords are static relating to your whole site. not the dynamic data specified by the URL. (?content=....)