[ic] Removing '?' and '&' from the URL for search enginesubmission, Generate Static

[interchange-users@interchange.redhat.com (Dan Browning)]

At 09:17 PM 4/25/2002 -0400, you wrote:
>On Thu, Apr 25, 2002 at 03:45:08PM -0700, Dan Browning wrote:
> > Fellow Interchangers,
> >
> > I recently filed a bug for the Generate Static feature (
> > http://interchange.redhat.com/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=419 ).  (It is also
> > pasted below).  Please comment on that if you would like.  Otherwise, I
> > would like to ask what you are doing to submit sites to search engines 
> that
> > require that '?' and '&' are not in the URL.  Are you using Static
> > generation?
>
>I'm not convinced it's an issue.  Google doesn't seem to care, at least
>for top level pages.  If you get static pages indexed, you then lose
>the referer and that seems more of an issue.  We use web server
>rewrites and include minivend in ssi where a client gets really
>concerned about bcentral reports.  :-)
>--
>Christopher F. Miller, Publisher                               cfm@maine.com

Thanks, Christopher.  According to 
http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/01/23/index1a_page3.html?tw=e-business 
, Google and Inktomi are the *only* search engines that can handle ? and &.

So the way I see it, one has two choices:
  1. Static pages
  2. Change the URLs.

Amazon does #2, in this fashion:

amazon.com/store?shop=cd&sku= B00004WFIZ&ref=p_ir_m&sessionID= 
107-6571839-6268523
... become ...
amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/ref= B00004WFIZ/ref=pd_ir_m/107-6571839-6268523

So an Interchange-like similarity would be:

http://site/checkout?id=AevUaQQ7&mv_pc=27
...becomes...
http://site/checkout/SPECIAL_URL/name=id/value=AevUaQQ7/name=mv_pc/value=27

Or something of the like.  Would anyone care to comment on it?  I've only 
had one contribution to the thread so far, and I think this is a big issue 
(especially considering the static generation is in a state of limbo for now).

Also, does anybody remember the time when the "&" was called into question 
because of some new 4.04 (or thereabouts) HTML spec?  I couldn't seem to 
find it in my knowledge base, but it seems like it might be related to this 
thread.

Anyway, thanks.


+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
| Dan Browning, Kavod Technologies <db@kavod.com>
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Have you noticed the way people's intelligence capabilities decline
sharply the minute they start waving guns around?
                 -- Dr. Who