G sees only error message, yahoo and msn not

Hi folks,

Looking to solve a problem that is:
- Bought pretty complex php open source script
- Indexes fine with msn and yahoo
- But google caches it as "MySQL database error..."
- So checked the source code and found that there is a db request that indicates a table name which includes session variables, that somehow yahoo and msn transmit but G does not
- So in the source code, as the session-variable for G is empty, the MySQL request selects a db-table that does not exist and thus the error

(Sense of this in the script is the chosing of the language, si the table name is table_eng where the 'eng' comes from a session variable. As G does only have an empty session variable MySQL tries to select table_ which then doesn't exist and throws out an error)

I solved this (losing however multi language support of the script) by hardcoding table_eng as opposed to table_".$blablabla.

G now does not show this error any longer, but came up with another php error, I guess still due to the missing session variables.

My fear is that I can try to solve these one by one, but every time I solved one problem the next will pop up. Now my questions:
- Any idea about a good threat or article on such kinds of issues, or an idea for a solution
- Any idea for a googlebot simulator that includes the same problem, so that at least I can instantly see the results and do not have to wait for G to show me a new cache in order to understand whether my intervention did help?

Remark to the second point: The spider simulator here on seochat has the problem (does not find any links on the spidered page, but there are lots of links), but doesn't show me the result of the crawl. All the other spider simulators I tried don't fall in the trap (accept session variables?) and render the page as intended so without any php errors.

thx a lot for your help
Phillip

Hi, this is me again, the author of this thread.

Given that I have no replys so far (and I was really looking forward to getting these) I have two explanations:
Either I was writing badly, and one understood my problem,
or this is not the correct forum for this kind of questions, and I would need a more tecky-driven forum.

So, while I am checking my writing, I would highly appreciate if someone had an idea on where to post this problem in order to find help.

thx a lot for your support
Phillip

You do not name the script so it is not easy to tell what you are talking about.
that said
Many companies who offer scripts also host forums or other "self help" solutions such as FAQ.
Here you might be able to find others who have solved the problem you are having.
If I were you I would contact the author or company which sold you the script and also check for any support offered.
Personally I prefer to do business with companies who offer support in the form of self help fourms or direct one on one for special problems.

To make your site search engine friendly you probably need to restructure it, making a clear distinction between the following types of pages:

Informational pages - these are the pages which give information to the visitor and which you want the SE's to index. They should not be dependent on any session variables.

Interactive pages - these are the pages where your site is gathering information from the visitor. For these you may need session variables, so to avoid errors it's best to exclude the search engine spiders using robots.txt.

Thx for your hints.

The script is not very well known (ilance v3). I didn't post it as I thought it might not help very much.

The company offers a forum, and that problem has been discussed there at length, but no one was able to resolve it. Given that they are still in a RC stage time for these little details as SEO is not given:-)

To John:
In terms of splitting the site in two (static and dynamic) I love the idea. I could as well (beyond SEO) reduce download time to my users. but it's a huge step to do that, so I didn't yet dare to do that. Also, I am not really decided to do that as there is not a single purely static page and I might lose some functionality to the users. Anyway in order to continue to consider would you have any idea for a script or article that might help doing this?

For the time being I understand that there is no well known fix to the Google session variable issue (that yahoo and msn do not have)?

thx again for your support
Phillip