Get vs. Post Method – Search Engine Robots
Often times we are asked by clients can search engines spider forms or access the information behind forms. The answer is “yes” it can, but you need to make sure you are using the correct “method”. Forms usually use 2 types of methods – the way by which the information on the page is submitted to the server and deliver results back to the web users. These two methods are “get” and “post”. The “get” sends the data as part of the URL. When the form data (or “query data”) is added to the end of the URL it is “URL encoded” so that the data can be used in a standard URL. The post method is the preferred method for sending lengthy form data. When a form is submitted POST the user does not see the form data that was sent.
Now in regards to which has the ability to spider the information behind the form, as explained below by Wikipedia, the “get” method has this ability to get spidered by search engines:
Get vs. Post Method
Get
Requests a representation of the specified resource. Note: GET should not be used for operations that cause side-effects, such as using it for taking actions in web applications. One reason for this is that GET may be used arbitrarily by robots or crawlers, which should not need to consider the side effects that a request should cause. See safe methods below.
Post
Submits data to be processed (e.g., from an HTML form) to the identified resource. The data is included in the body of the request. This may result in the creation of a new resource or the updates of existing resources or both.
Safe Methods
Some methods (for example, HEAD, GET, OPTIONS and TRACE) are defined as safe, which means they are intended only for information retrieval and should not change the state of the server. In other words, they should not have side effects, beyond relatively harmless effects such as logging, caching, the serving of banner advertisements or incrementing a web counter. Making arbitrary GET requests without regard to the context of the application’s state should therefore be considered safe.
By contrast, methods such as POST, PUT and DELETE are intended for actions which may cause side effects either on the server, or external side effects such as financial transactions or transmission of email. Such methods are therefore not usually used by conforming web robots or web crawlers, which tend to make requests without regard to context or consequences.
Despite the prescribed safety of GET requests, in practice their handling by the server is not technically limited in any way, and careless or deliberate programming can just as easily (or more easily, due to lack of user agent precautions) cause non-trivial changes on the server. This is discouraged, because it can cause problems for Web caching, search engines and other automated agents, which can make unintended changes on the server.
Related posts:
Search Engine News | seowhitehats | April 20, 2009
