This may or may not have full relevance here and has been talked about in one of these forums I'm sure. But what does the ? (question mark) do to URL's ranking? If you have a page without it they rank higher if you add it with a variable or something after it the ranking drops like a rock. Any input would be helpful.

Here is how it works. The stand alone page gets a PR. The same page with a query string is viewed as "less important" as a result of the page being "dynamically displayed" relying on the query string information to run a script (PHP, ASP, CGI, etc.) and display the page.

Thank you kline11. That's helpfull. Does that also mean that google bots have a harder time getting past that quary into another page? It seams that it throws them off. Any ideas on ways to get around this save for redoing the whole string methode on your site? Thanks

Google will read your page with variables just fine, but they do seem to have a PR penalty for pages with variables. I tested this a few months ago. The pages with a variable were on average 1 pr lower than without. I used the same link structure for both.