Hi, I want to register my domino site with a number of search engines but what are all the things a I need to do to my database to enable it to be picked in search engine?
Meta tags in the Head?
Many thanks
Subject: What is the best way to enable Google to be able to register domino pages
You can try meta tags, but google is not very depending on them. For a good score, you have to make sure that a lot of other servers are pointing towards you. Also check out tutorials for the robot.txt file.For Domino matters, also make sure that ‘Make this site accessible to web site search crawlers’ is set to ‘1’, so that your URL’s don’t use the ‘?’ character.
Subject: RE: What is the best way to enable Google to be able to register domino pages
Thanks but I don’t understand!
Where do I find and set ‘Make this site accessible to web site search crawlers’
Also, my URLs use the ‘?’ characters and have my links etc in my views set with ‘?’ not ‘!’.
By setting this to 1, will it change them on the fly or will I still need to go into my code and change the ‘?’ into ‘!’?
I used ‘!’ and had problems although I’ve just tried this again and found it to work ok.
Thanks again.
Subject: RE: What is the best way to enable Google to be able to register domino pages
Steve,
the ‘Make this site accessible to web site search crawlers’ option is set in the public NAB, in the Web Site document for your Website, on the Domino Web Engine tab.
Stephan
Subject: RE: What is the best way to enable Google to be able to register domino pages
OK, I guess this is an administrators job then. My host I doubt will allow me to set these settings.
One more thing, do I still need to convert all my URLS from ‘?’ to ‘!’
Thanks
Subject: RE: What is the best way to enable Google to be able to register domino pages
Yes, but only where a query string is actually required (or if you are letting Domino create all of the links for you). Where you create your own links and the action is simply going to be ?OpenWhatever, then leave the query string out altogether – ?OpenWhatever is the default action.
If Google (and its like) are your target, though, you really have to get some links up and running. Until someone links to you, you’ll be way low on the search results.
Subject: RE: What is the best way to enable Google to be able to register domino pages
OK, I think I understand.So for these types…
…/ComputerSales.nsf/frmWelcome?OpenForm
Change to
…/ComputerSales.nsf/frmWelcome
Is this good practice?
For this type…
…/ComputerSales.nsf/frmWelcome?OpenForm&menu=one
change to…
…/ComputerSales.nsf/frmWelcome!OpenForm&menu=one
Is this what you mean?
Subject: RE: What is the best way to enable Google to be able to register domino pages
Exactly. For instance, the URL to your last posting would simply be:
http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/nd6forum.nsf/DateAllFlatweb/5035691fe65768d085256ee500428052
The reason for dumping the query string (?OpenDocument) or replacing the ? with ! is that search engines tend to regard URLs containing ? as the result of a search or the midpoint in a process. As such, the page may not be valid if hit directly (i.e., without a valid session cookie or SID from whatever might have come before), so they won’t index the link.
Subject: RE: What is the best way to enable Google to be able to register domino pages
You might be interested in the white paper on this site - it’s tangential (same issue but for WebSphere Portal Server) and non-technical. See "New dotNSF tool makes WebSphere Portals more “Search Engine Friendly”"http://dotnsf.com