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& and & encoding searchresults

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Old 08-05-2008, 07:49 AM   #1
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Default & and & encoding searchresults

I have just discovered that the if one uses the raw urls from searches on an html page as a link, the XHTML validator plays up. &type for example needs to be encoded as &type etc.

The effect of this is if you claim your document is xhtml compliant and you use the searchresults urls as links without the encoding on any page, it will not validate.

Of equal note, spiders and sitemap generators will not encode the urls you present to them correctly because if you present a correct url like this

http://www.mysite/searchresults.php?...;Submit=Search

The urls when paginating onwards from this url become a mess.

More strange still, if you make a link from the url without the encoding as it would arrive after doing a search in the status bar of the browser

http://www.mysite/searchresults.php?...&Submit=Search
and accept non XHTML valid code, spiders and generators attempt to put the encoding in and it then makes a mess of the urls where there is pagination still.

Any ideas how to overcome this? A bit technical but I would like to know if anyone has searchresults pages indexed and there is pagination.
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Old 08-05-2008, 08:42 AM   #2
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The lines in the showlistings.tpl which appear to be creatng the problem are for example

<a href="searchresults.php?searchtext=land&type=& amp;minprice=&maxprice=&Submit=Search& page=2" class="paginationNum">2</a>

Sitemap generators are picking this up correctly. However, when this renders in the status bar it comes out as

http://www.french-property-sale.eu/s...=Search&page=2


The major problem is what will the search engine spiders do? Will they take the url returned by the status bar or will they take the encoded url. Sitemap generators also take the encoded url.

I see no way round this problem unless all search result urls (in the status bar) are encoded. This makes them very messy.
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Last edited by seymourjames; 08-05-2008 at 08:47 AM.
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Old 08-06-2008, 05:55 AM   #3
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Bump.

Has anybody got any search results pages indexed in google? And if so, does this page have pagination (i.e. links to further pages returned from the search). Are any of these pages indexed?
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