WebSphere Commerce soups up search spidering

IBM next month will ship new versions of its WebSphere Commerce and Commerce Express servers aimed at both large and smaller businesses. The products will contain a search engine optimization capability that enables spidering technology within search engines such as Google and Yahoo.

The search capability in the upcoming WebSphere Commerce 5.6.1 and WebSphere Commerce Express 5.6.1, allows search engines to index the pages of e-commerce sites so they come up high on the list of search results. The new feature also increases the number of Web site pages returned from a search.

"When you have a personalized site, one that dynamically generates pages, it is hard for spidering technology of the search engines to actually index your pages because they are not static pages. With this technology an increasing number of pages will continue to be indexed," said Craig Stevenson, manager for strategy and planning for the e-commerce and multichannel retailing solutions group at IBM.

Stevenson said the search technology uses URL mapping as the way to allow search engines to index dynamic pages.

One user said the new searching feature is what the product needs.

"This has been one of the criticisms of the WebSphere Commerce platform for some time," said John Howard, president of Carrot Ink. "It is good news they are finally addressing this issue."