search engines and dynamic pages

I operate a number of web sites currently consisting of individual
html pages.

I am considering moving to a CMS approach whereby content is held in a
database and fed into page templates on demand.

Can search engines succesfully index dynamic content pages of the form
myurl.com/article.php?id=123 or is it necessary/better for each page
to have a separate page url?

On May 11, 12:38 am, "abracad_1...@yahoo.com" <abracad_1...@yahoo.com>
wrote:
> I operate a number of web sites currently consisting of individual
> html pages.
>
> I am considering moving to a CMS approach whereby content is held in a
> database and fed into page templates on demand.
>
> Can search engines succesfully index dynamic content pages of the form
> myurl.com/article.php?id=123 or is it necessary/better for each page
> to have a separate page url?

Hi generalle speaking it is better to reduce the number of parameters
in an URL. My experience is that two or three parameters do not harm.
If you do have the possibility to move the parameters into the URL
that might be better, for your example this could look like:
myurl.com/article/123
which has to be transfered via mod_rewrite (Apache module) into /
article.php?id=123

Regards

On May 10, 4:38 pm, "abracad_1...@yahoo.com" <abracad_1...@yahoo.com>
wrote:
> I operate a number of web sites currently consisting of individual
> html pages.
>
> I am considering moving to a CMS approach whereby content is held in a
> database and fed into page templates on demand.
>
> Can search engines succesfully index dynamic content pages of the form
> myurl.com/article.php?id=123 or is it necessary/better for each page
> to have a separate page url?

if id=123 stays stable it shouldn't be a problem.

But if you drop or empty and reload the schema periodically, for what
ever
reason, and if that causes the page whose id once was id=123 to now
become
id=345, then you will have trouble.

On 11 May 2007 12:42:22 -0700, Gene Yusnot <Sandy.Pittendrigh@gmail.com> wrote:
> On May 10, 4:38 pm, "abracad_1...@yahoo.com" <abracad_1...@yahoo.com>
> wrote:
>> I operate a number of web sites currently consisting of individual
>> html pages.
>>
>> I am considering moving to a CMS approach whereby content is held in a
>> database and fed into page templates on demand.
>>
>> Can search engines succesfully index dynamic content pages of the form
>> myurl.com/article.php?id=123 or is it necessary/better for each page
>> to have a separate page url?
>
> if id=123 stays stable it shouldn't be a problem.
>
> But if you drop or empty and reload the schema periodically, for what
> ever
> reason, and if that causes the page whose id once was id=123 to now
> become
> id=345, then you will have trouble.
>

The best is to use URL rewriting and use more descriptive url's,
e.g. instead of

http://example.com/article.php?id=123

you would have

http://example.com/article/get-out-o...ine-poker.html

etc. That is more google friendly and more people friendly.

i