Can search engines read an include file? I am using includes on my HTML and need them to be read by se’s?
I have a site that relies on search engine traffic and I need to make sure that includes can easily be read by search engines. If not, I’ll have to change the coding.
More details: This is the code my program generated. I don’t think this is SSI? Can THIS be read?
<!–webbot bot="Include" U-Include="includes/mysite-navagationincludes2.htm" TAG="BODY" startspan –>
3 Responses
Chris G
02 Feb 2010
David A
02 Feb 2010
include that information in a meta tag. Many search engines read the meta tag data
knowguy
02 Feb 2010
Not likely. Search engine "spider bots" only read a web page like a plain text file, and then only about 1500 characters from the beginning to find words. The spider bots do not follow links or execute code to make their word lists, so include files are out.
Includes are server side, so whatever you are including will be rendered before the bot can index it. Therefore, the viewable portion of your includes will be viewed as if they were part of the webpage itself.
I hope that makes sense, if not:
index.php consists of:
header_include.php
main_body.php
footer_include.php
This will be viewed as one document, index.php, and not 3 separate documents once rendered by the browser.