[HFWang]

Originally posted by Sunny Thaper
Alright, I guess I will get into this. We can all agree that Google is possibly one of the biggest if not the biggest search engine out there correct? Alright with that said, this is directly from Google's site. "# We are able to index dynamically generated pages. However, because our web crawler can easily overwhelm and crash sites serving dynamic content, we limit the amount of dynamic pages we index." Taken from http://www.google.com/webmasters/2.html#A1 and that means that with dynamic pages you will probably not be archieved correctly and completely. By "HTML Pages" I mean pages that do not use php in any form and have an extension of .htm or .html And also there are search engines out there that cannot browse dynamic pages like you stated.

Correct. What that means is that it won't parse through sites that use querystrings (which b2 uses by default, BTW: I'm using b2 as an example because I am really familiar with it.)

HOWEVER! And this is the point you seem to be missing, I can make b2 create URLs like foo.com/b2/archives/2003/09/03/ just like in MT! Not only that, but even that is not the full story. :-P You see, you can even customize the URLs that are created.

Also this post wasn't about the best CMS system it was about a good one therefore trying to force B2 into this makes no sense. But since you threw it in, you making your B2 copy "fully XHTML2 compliant" lends me to believe you are wasting time because MT already comes scripted to be standards compliant without haveing to change anything.

I used b2 as an example because I am familiar with it. However, I brought it in because you were talking about how other blogs hurt your search engine ranking. I used it as an example of a toggleable feature that could then nullify the difference (it is toggleable because activating it requires access to .htaccess...)

Now then: standards compliance: I brought it up because you brought it up. The default template is MORE standards compliant than MT's. b2, by DEFAULT uses divs instead of tables to create containers and create the layout. I'm just saying that MT makes it harder for you to make XHTML2 sites (as opposed to HTML, or even XHTML1). XHTML2 requires a mime-type of (I think) Application/XML or something like that.

Nothing I can say for that except good for B2! But one thing that you keep making mention of is control of output... MT gives you complete control of output in everyway, templates, posts, and you can use external programs through MT's API.

Thats exactly my point. Most blog tools let you do that. Its a really moot point to tout MT for having "templating". That is a required feature.

It's true no one will go through a list of pure urls but you did leave out one possibility for this which is actually my main point. The more links you have to your site the greater the chances are that a search engine will visit you hence if MT links to you and since it is quite a popular site you will get hit by search engines. And again, I am not debating that MT is better than b2 or vice versa, merely showing people that MT is a good tool.

And I'm saying that MT isn't a be-all end-all. I don't hate MT, I just hate it when people talk about google and make generalizations. However, think of this. Google, and quite a few other search engines penalize link exchanges (sort of.) Ever see those sites that have a never-ending list of links? Search engines then just assume that its a way to drum up traffic and ignore it. Thus, moot point.

Again with the information above I have more than proved my point that having standards and a lack of dynamic content lends itself to be a good thing.

You haven't more than proved it. You have yet to make a case that lack of dynamic content is inherently superior.
Standards = good. You're preaching to the choir here though.

Again, WHAT advantage do you gain from static content that isn't more than made up for by the simple fact that dynamic is dynamic, write a template, and update content on the fly? URLs can be rewritten with apache (thus negating your google arguement). And that appears to be your only arguement on that regard.

Here, I'll repeat that arguement, so that you'll get this, because that is the ONLY reason I started talking.

You can rewrite URLs in apache, so that search engines think you're just giving them files from off a hard drive in a directory struture, so that they don't realize that its a dynamic site!

And here was my clarification that I posted a few posts back which argued against the exact point that you just stated.

<h1>Hi</h1> as outputted by a PHP script is the exact same as <h1>Hi</h1> as outputted by a Perl script (which is what I believe MT is).

A static webpage is a completely different entity than what google caches. Google caches "snapshots" of the page. Thus, what is outputted by b2 is going to have the exact same weight as the output of MT. Do you understand what I'm saying thus far? For the purposes of actually parsing the HTML and all that, it doesn't really care what makes the page (and probably can't tell anyway)

Now then, what DOES make a difference, and maybe what you were thinking of is the fact that google does figure out that pages are dynamic. (I believe this occurs when you have querystrings, IE: index.php?view=foo). What googles does is then not index as deeply, because its dynamic, who knows, it might go into an infinite loop (the URLs are all different, say for a visit-tracker)