If you've spent any time investigating Internet search engines and a Web site's potential for visibility in them, you've probably discovered that dynamic URLs are difficult for Internet search engine spiders to crawl.

Dynamic URLs are addresses that typically contain these symbols: ampersand (&), percent sign (%), equal sign (=), dollar sign ($) or question mark (?).

While a lot of content management solutions might appear to be able to improve the situation, you might later find that these symbols are still the kiss-of-death to your site's visibility in search engines.

So what can you do to improve your dynamic site's visibility?

What Experts Have Said
Traditionally, the advice of search engine optimization (SEO) experts has been to develop static content, which can be indexed. The two standard fixes have been to envelop a page in frames or to create "flat" versions of those pages.

Most browsers support frames. Frames involve splitting a browser window into sections within which separate pages are displayed.

Creating flat pages involves copying a page's text to a file that will be hosted at a fixed address alongside the dynamic one.

Of course, problems are associated with both these solutions.

Frames Support
Frames have had only sporadic support by Internet search engine spiders. Spiders that don't read frames instead read the body of the frame-setting document only, which is inside the noframes tag. Most webmasters, though, simply place a statement like "Get a real browser" inside that tag, which does nothing to improve a site's visibility.

Case in point: A quick search at Google for "your browser does not support frames" indicates Google currently does not read frames, but will index the contents of the noframes tag. That's the content you'll see displayed on the Google results page.

The Frames-Based Solution
In a frames-based solution, frames are used to split the screen. The dynamic page comprises the majority of the display while its source code is copied into the noframes tag.

Another place to insert flat pages where they can be indexed is in a thin or a transparent frame alongside the dynamic page display.

The problem with this approach is that new generations of spiders capable of reading frames reconstitute the entire set of pages, regarding the set as a whole. It's probably only a matter of time before Google also reads frames this way.

This is a problem because your noframes tag will be ignored. Not to mention that if a search engine discovers your thin or transparent frame page, the whole site could be demoted as spam.

Flat Pages
Creating a flat version of dynamic material, either automatically or by hand, carries its own set of difficulties but is a better long-term solution.

The usual difficulty is that managers of large sites truly dislike handling anything outside their comfort zone and content management system. They might resist adding or changing anything. (This may be the case, though, whether you suggest adding frames or if you create flat pages and ask that they be hosted and integrated.)

However, incorporating information pages -- highly focused pages intended to be a natural part of the site -- has worked really well to get otherwise invisible material into spider-friendly form.

With each solution to the dynamic site problem, I would advise you to take advantage of expedited indexing services recently made available. These solutions get your material, dynamic or flat, crawled quickly and taken into the publicly searchable index within 72 hours or better.

Inktomi has rolled out a variety of solutions, from Search/Submit for small sites, on to Index Connect for sites of 1,000 pages or more.

Fast Search and AltaVista have also developed an expedited submit program.