I have a classifieds website…
The classifieds are displayed in a dynamic php page.
For instance, if one searches for “bmw m3” in the form (which is in index.html) and submits, then a php page will appear showing results.
The php page called results.php, connects to mysql databases and fetches the information, and puts them in a table, and then outputs the table using a simple echo command.
<body>
echo $table;
</body>
The classifieds shown in the table above, are all just “headlines“, so when clicking one classified to view all details, then another php page opens called ad.php.
Here I fetch the ad_id and then fetch all details from MySql, and show to the users.
Now, if somebody doesn’t like filling out forms (for example google crawlers, or also users), I have all categories on my site at the bottom of index.html. Users may click these and then the results.php page appears, showing all results in that category.
Offcourse I also have a sitemap which consists of all classifieds, and is dynamic.
My problem is, so far, none of my classifieds have been indexed.
My question is, is a sitemap.xml with all classifieds in it, as well as a link to the results.php page for each category enough for Search Engines to index the classifieds?
What else do I need to do?
FYI: I use mod rewrite to rewrite urls, so in this case I have a rule which makes the original link to details of a classified:
www.domain.com/ad.php?ad_id=bmw_m3_249244
INTO:
www.domain.com/ads/bmw_m3_249244
And it is the rewritten URL I have in my sitemap.
Thanks
Have you submitted your sitemap.xml to the search engines? or specified it in the robots.txt?
Link below explains.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sitemaps