: SEO consideration for downloadable files I used to serve PDF files as static file: http://domain.com/pdf/file1.pdf and PDF files perfectly indexed by Google and other search engines. Then I decided
I used to serve PDF files as static file:
domain.com/pdf/file1.pdf
and PDF files perfectly indexed by Google and other search engines. Then I decided to change my structure to place pdf files outside public folder, and then make them downloadable through PHP as
domain.com/pdf.php?id=1
The PDF files with the new structure have not been indexed by search engines.
From SEO point of view, is it better to serve PDF files as static files, rather than making them downloadable through a PHP script?
The script looks like
header('Content-Description: File Transfer');
header('Content-Type: application/octet-stream');
header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="'.$filename.'"');
header('Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary');
header('Expires: 0');
header('Cache-Control: must-revalidate');
header('Pragma: public');
header('Content-Length: ' . filesize($file));
ob_clean();
flush();
readfile($file);
exit;
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1 Comments
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According to stackoverflow.com/questions/312230/proper-mime-media-type-for-pdf-files the proper mime type for PDF files is application/pdf so you should change the line in your script to:
header('Content-Type: application/pdf');
I suspect that Google also uses the file extension on the URL as an indicator that there is a PDF file there and that it should be indexed. You should consider serving your PDF files like:
domain.com/pdf.php/filename.pdf
You wouldn't even need a rewrite rule to do so, you could get the filename in PHP out of the $_SERVER[REQUEST_URI] variable.
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