cause I use an include for my sidebar articles menu.

Search engines don't see PHP code (well, they shouldn't anyway). If you want to hide content from SE's, then try writing the content with javascript.

No I was not intending to hide anything but get crawled by SE. I used include() function to load an article menu sidebar with links certainly.

then yes, including a file or article with php is not like javascript. Search engines will see the article/links etc... when you view your page just right click.view source and whatever you see is what spiders see.

nice idea, but I think that php cannot be seen, as it executes to the server before the page loads..

No of course not. I thought you meant the output (html) of the included file. No php can never be seen unless 'you' make it viewable.

So google cannot index links that are under include function?

I think we are talking about two different things here:

...by links do you mean outputed links that humans can see? Yes.

Or do you mean if you do:
include("http://somesite.com/a_page.php");
will google see http://somesite.com/a_page.php as a link? NO but google will see the contents of http://somesite.com/a_page.php on your page as if it was yours and if there are links within that content, google will see those links.

Here:
I made this just for you.
Enter the page url in question. It will display what a spider sees.
http://www.inet411.com/webmaster-too...iew-source.php

I know how does my page, get in the view source, what I mean is that using the include function like <?php include(header.php) ?> where header.php contains a header with my menu and links too. So SE cannot view and indexed my other links

Let's try explaining this another way: PHP runs on the server and has nothing to do with what search engines see. To see what a search engine can see, visit the page in a browser and go to view->source. That's what they can see -- if it's there, then they read it; otherwise they can't see it. Javascript can be used to scramble up their view, but otherwise it's all indexable and has nothing to do with how you code it.

well I guess I solved this. I just removed the include from the first page that links to others so: My main page( no include function) ---> My advertising page( no include)-->other pages related to Advertising page(with include).

Originally Posted by JeremyMiller

Let's try explaining this another way: PHP runs on the server and has nothing to do with what search engines see. To see what a search engine can see, visit the page in a browser and go to view->source. That's what they can see -- if it's there, then they read it; otherwise they can't see it. Javascript can be used to scramble up their view, but otherwise it's all indexable and has nothing to do with how you code it.

That's what I was going to say.

Look at that. Jeremy and I agree. I don't know the first thing about PHP, hardly, and I know what he says is true. That should tell you something.

yes I know. you cannot view php source.It is executed on server before lading in the browser.

Well the real question is whether that PHP source renders HTML a spider will be able to parse and index. Your PHP could in theory write nothing by javascript, which would still be invisible to the search bots. Or it could use frames, which would also be bad.

But the real trick is, anything you want to do, try it, then view source from the output page in your browser. That will show you exactly what the search bots will see. I don't think there's any reason an include function should trip up the spiders, but you can prove it to yourself one way or the other and not have to rely on my guess.

Well, know what? You are right I just tried to view the source and it appeared right. I though that the include function could hide the links and possibly prevent from being indexed just like image links or javascript as you mentioned. Well I was wrong. Thanks by the way.