Title: Disastrous wrong turn?
Last modified: August 20, 2016

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# Disastrous wrong turn?

 *  [stevewilson](https://wordpress.org/support/users/stevewilson/)
 * (@stevewilson)
 * [14 years, 12 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/disastrous-wrong-turn/)
 * I asked a while back how WordPress pages are indexed considering that they are
   only created on the fly (i.e., are not static HTML files sitting out there) and
   was advised (by esmi) that crawlers “run” (my word) a site, creating pages on
   the fly as would any visitor.
 * But is this a problem?: in order to control layout placement both within the 
   front page and any interior page, we pull content using our own SQL. Its different
   versions sit, for any crawler to read, out in the open, although in functions.
   php, called from the likes of home.php, etc.
 * Our worry is whether crawlers make assumptions about how WordPress is constructed,
   therefore never find custom SQL, therefore don’t create our pages and therefore
   fail to index our site, in which case we’ve created a mess. Does anyone have 
   any knowledge of this?

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)

 *  [Jonas Grumby](https://wordpress.org/support/users/ss_minnow/)
 * (@ss_minnow)
 * [14 years, 12 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/disastrous-wrong-turn/#post-2084449)
 * It seems to me that they would be able to crawl anything that you can see in 
   the page source when you view the page.
 *  [Jonas Grumby](https://wordpress.org/support/users/ss_minnow/)
 * (@ss_minnow)
 * [14 years, 12 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/disastrous-wrong-turn/#post-2084459)
 * Actually there may be one consideration. I know that in the “old days” of Google
   and SEO, it *used to be* (may not still be) that Google would not crawl any URLs
   with more than two wildcard characters in them, like the “&” in:
 * whatever.com/&store_name=MyStore&category=stuffedanimals&item=bear
 * So, if you have that going on it may be something to consider. A long time ago
   I was the genius who figured out how to have shorter URLs in Miva Merchant to
   avoid this SEO problem. It doesn’t seem to be a problem with WordPress because
   wildcard characters are not used in the URLs.
 *  [Michael](https://wordpress.org/support/users/alchymyth/)
 * (@alchymyth)
 * [14 years, 12 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/disastrous-wrong-turn/#post-2084461)
 * there are endless variations of dynamic webpages and websites out there (for 
   instance all mail order sites), and they all get crawled and indexed and found
   by the search engines.
    crawlers have as little access to the sql and database
   as any other visitor – they get the rendered end result html page presented.
 * imho, crawlers are too busy to make assumptions.
 * if you like, ask these questions at the major search engine help forums – these
   guys are probably better prepared to give you a satisfying answer…
 *  Thread Starter [stevewilson](https://wordpress.org/support/users/stevewilson/)
 * (@stevewilson)
 * [14 years, 12 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/disastrous-wrong-turn/#post-2084487)
 * Thanks to you both. Sounds like we’re safe. No “&”s used. But I’ll certainly 
   take up your suggestion to ask again at engine forums.
 *  Thread Starter [stevewilson](https://wordpress.org/support/users/stevewilson/)
 * (@stevewilson)
 * [14 years, 12 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/disastrous-wrong-turn/#post-2084506)
 * You wouldn’t happen to have a URL for such a forum would you? For Google, Bing,
   whatever? I went looking and kept falling into SEO sites and others pretending
   to be Google. Just a standard help-each-other forum or two like this one?

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)

The topic ‘Disastrous wrong turn?’ is closed to new replies.

## Tags

 * [crawlers](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/crawlers/)
 * [indexing](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/indexing/)
 * [sql](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/sql/)

 * In: [Fixing WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/how-to-and-troubleshooting/)
 * 5 replies
 * 3 participants
 * Last reply from: [stevewilson](https://wordpress.org/support/users/stevewilson/)
 * Last activity: [14 years, 12 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/disastrous-wrong-turn/#post-2084506)
 * Status: not resolved

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