At 04:43 PM 11/15/2011, you wrote: >I'm not certain I agree with this. > >Googlebot issues a plain-Jane GET request when it accesses a web page, >just like any other browser. If the SSI is truly server side, then the >server will evaluate the SSI statement at the time of the request and >replace it with the HTML equivalent and return that to the requester. >Google never sees the original SSI statement. > >I just Googled one of my own web pages and confirmed the SSI statement was >replaced as described above. Jim, I have been corresponding with Rod Davis about this and Rod agrees with you. I now do too -- up to a point. The initial test I conducted was a Google search for the word "tutorials", part of the phrase "Pat's Web Page Tutorials", which is part of the SSI footer on every page at http://freepages.computers.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~pasher/ What I discovered was that a Google search for tutorials site:http://freepages.computers.rootsweb.ancestry.com or "Pat's Web Page Tutorials" site:http://freepages.computers.rootsweb.ancestry.com/ reported all the pages with the ssi include for the footer. Changing the site:URL to freepages.computers.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~pasher/ excluded hits for the pages with the ssi include for the footer. I'm trying to understand why there is a difference in the hits from the entire Freepages server, and those from my specific account. The specific include for this directory is an HTML file as opposed to a TXT file. Could that be a factor? Pat Asher