i got a struts web application (running on tomcat 6) with all files except the first one which invokes a starting action located in the WEB-INF and u always need a Session to use it otherwise you will be redirected to the starting action and starting page again.
The app main function is a search which provide products from a database. How does a crawler navigate in my app? Does it trigger the search which could lead it to error pages? Or can it only follow links that are not embedded in forms (well struts makes nearly everything to forms therefore there are only some links and mostly onclick redirects and form actions)
How can i provide useful information that can be indexed to a crawler like this?
thanks for advice :)
Sounds like you would best off reading up on some seo guidelines: http://www.google.com.au/search?q=seo+guidelines&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&client=firefox-a&safe=high,
To answer your questsions:
Crawlers will generally navigate to your app from external links on the web, or after you submit your site to the search engine.
The crawler won't fill in inputs and submit forms, it will follow hyperlinks between your pages.
If you want the crawler to index your search results (can't really see why you would want this) you can put links to common searches on one of your already indexed pages.
You should make sure that your product pages are SEO friendly and are indexed instead of your search results.