XML | HTML | PHP - what does Google prefer?

[mago]

Which of the following is likely to get a better ranking in a search engine such as Google?

1. index.htm with all text embedded directly in the .htm file

2. index.htm with text from an external .xml file

3. index.htm with text from an external .php file

Also, would your answer be different if the index file would be a .php instead of a .htm?

Regards

[philaweb]

mago,

The answer is very simple - it does not matter.

The search engine looks at the content output readability and accessability.

[TechEvangelist]

There are people who believe that Google favors .htm and .html page extensions, but I have set up several .asp and .php sites and see no difference. The site is still serving HTML to the spider, even with dynamic pages.

It does make a difference if you start adding a lot of name-value pairs to a query string, or if you use id=

Google warns you not to do that on their Webmaster Guidelines pages.

[mago]

Thanks for your replies. I'm learning .xml at the moment, looks like I'll go for that one then.

Regards