According to Google followers over at Webmaster World (including a Google employee going under the name of “GoogleGuy”), Google is perfecting their technology to better crawl and index dynamic web sites. Dynamic pages are valuable tools for anyone using a database to create web pages. Law School Discussion, for example, creates dynamic discussion threads that, until recently, were not being picked up by Google at all. (Actually Law School Discussion doesn’t use a database, but creates dynamic pages based on external files of each post, but the principle is the same.)

This is an important development in finding information on the web. The best ideas and the simplest explanations are never found in “FAQ” documents or the official “User Guide”. (How many troubleshooting documents have asked, “Is the device plugged in?” Not helpful at all.) Rather, answers are discovered through search, and the most valuable information tends to be that which is discussed informally – at a bar or on an internet message board. (Imagine if Google could index late-night bar conversations…)

By indexing dynamic sites, Google is opening doors to endless quantities of rich, valuable content. There’s still much room for improvement; Google indexes the threads of Law School Discussion, but not the individual posts (where the real content lives), but at least they’re moving forward.