Question Marks in URLs and search engines

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Document Subject: Question Marks in URLs and search engines
Hint Short Cut: Add this to your code & documentation to help you find this page.
http://#QuestionMarks or http://A555F9/nn.nsf/ByAlias/QuestionMarks

Question Marks are used in Lotus Notes Domino URLs. They are used to specify ?OpenForm or ?EditDocument. Some web search engines' spiders can process these urls, some can't, some process them if they do not contain session id values or long id numbers.

What can we do about this to ease web crawlers problems?

We can omit the ?opendocument or ?openform or ?openview etc on the url.

NB if you do this, make sure your forms and views do not have the same names or aliases.

You can user !opendocument or !openform or !openview etc. i find that some urls do not work with certain cgi variables. I will list these problems here when I encounter them.

You can set the server document to produce URLs with the exclamation mark or exclamation point:

In the server document select the "Internet Protocols" tab, then the "Domino Web Engine" tab.

In the "Conversion/Display" section change the setting "Make this site accessible to web search site crawlers" to "Enabled".

Save the document and reload the HTTP Server task.