Randomizing Paragraph Text

We had a site done for us in .aspx (.NET) which has internal pages that are city or state specific. These pages are all currently using the same content paragraphs but have variable spots where the city, state, or state abrev is inserted on the fly.

I suspect the pages have too much duplicate content and therefore are not being indexed.

Question: Is there are way in .NET to randomize several different paragraphs?
For instance, let's say there are 5 paragraph zones and I write a total of 15 different paragraphs. Is there a script that would randomly grab from this pool of 15, and insert 5 paragraphs "while still using the city, state, or state abrev variables?" The result would then seem to give each of the pages when spidered by the engine robots, a more unique content variation and increase the probability of index inclusion.

Is this doable?

Thanks - Doc

I'm not familiar with the .net architecture but it shouldn't be a problem at all. Really all you need is a counter and an index in the database that updates the number. You would write it to that each time the page is retrieved it updates the counter in the database and then just cycles through 1-15.

Something simple like:

Code: [copy]

if (server requests 'yourpage.aspx'){ $sql = (fetch current count from table); if ($sql < 15) { $newcount = $sql + 1; } else { $newcount = 1; } $results = (fetch paragraph from table where recordnumber = $newcount ) // display the result

I'm sure something like that would to the trick. :)

Very cool Sinoed and thank you very much!

Sorry for responding so late, but your help is most appreciated. ;-)

Doc

No problem, glad to help.

I honestly question whether random text is the best answer. Do you really want a spider to encounter different content every time it requests the page? Do you want a visitor to find a page that doesn't match the SERP snippet?

Shortcuts rarely excel and the best solution, IMO, is to actually have different content for each page. Adding just a paragraph to each city record, for example, with population or other demographic information not only makes each page different but also shows the visitor the page really does apply to their locale. It helps build trust, I think.

Barring that possibility, however, I would still try to maintain consistent listings. You could, as just one example, add a single text field to each city record specifying which paragraphs to use on the page. A field of "ACDHB" might mean use paragraphs A, C, D, H and B in that particular order. Each city could be different from every other city, while still always looking the same to the spiders.