Those urls with question marks in them, such as www.billybob.com/stuff.aspx?id=nose&action=picking do they get crawled by the search engines just fine or not? Christine
Yes they are. Sometime i use "?" for tracking. Like www.domain.com?TrafficSource Actually they get crawled like any other page.
I was thinking that a static url like billybob.com/stuff/nose/picking would get ranked better and crawled better than a url like billybob.com/stuff.asp?part=nose&action=picking. Christine
These are usually dynamic urls such as ... domain.com/index.asp?key=21 Pages with this type of url are generated by dynamic content managment systems. They certainly do get crawled by search engines. Just make sure the the url (assuming its an inbound link you are getting) is from a content page on not some dynamic search result, e.g. domain.com/SearchResults.asp?key=13&PriceMinMonth=&PriceMaxMonth=&PriceMinWk=&PriceMaxWk=&BedsMin=-1&BedsMax=5 Such urls are usually based on specific parameters being entered to produce a dynamic page. This type of dynamic page would not be crawled.
If this url (action=picking) is permamently accessable to the search engines without entering input data then it will be cralwed just as well ... but IMO it may take longer for the url to initially get indexed.
Yes and no, Search engines aren't to hot on dynamicly created pages, they do index them but it takes time. I suggestion using apache url rewrite to create friendy search urls.
There is no need to re-write the url, if the link points to a content page that is static, e.g. the page is always there. Then it will get indexed well and any links from that page will give much benefit. Its just that it may take longer beofre search engines treat it as a static page. There are many examples I guess people will have different opinions
Apache Rewrite ALL THE WAY.... I used to have http://domain.com/page=music.php?artist=Artist_Name Now I have http://domain.com/Artist_Name Rewrites to index.php and index.php gets the url, splits it, finds if the 2nd part (Artist_Name) is an artist, or a page and acts from there. It is awsome. I used to get a bit of traffic from google now i get about 75% and the terms are very specific for artists, not just music in general.
Search engines like Google read url like that ok. I have a site like that. But search engines give some credit to keyword rich urls.
Keyword rich URLS will ALWAYS do better than those that look dynamically created. Some search engines don't read them, some penalize them. No SE is going to penalize a keyword rich URL so why not give them what they want. It is going to help you get indexed better and deeper. What do you think will get indexed faster? 123/1024207=? or easy-puppy-training.php Gregg
Agreed, I have found dynamic URLs (non rewritten ones with lots of variables in them) dont rank or get indexed at all well unless they are on a big big name site
If you have a "?" in your url its not at all SE friendly. You can get it fixed by using Apache url rewrite as suggested by ssandecki. Cheers, Cybotrix
Dynamic URLs are a living hell. I'm kind of forced to move my video site over to a new CMS because not a single page has been indexed in a year - except for the main pages that have links going to each page. I've still managed to get a SERP #5, page #1 for a major keyword, but I bet if each URL were SEO friendly, I could easily get #2.