pagerank calculation with spider friendly URLs

Discussion in 'Link Development' started by hilizbabe, Jul 27, 2006.

0
  1. #1
    I understand Pagerank is irrelavant for SERP. This question is more about how page rank is calculated.

    I have lot of products in my website and they are accessed using the url of type
    http://mywebsite.com/showProduct.php?productId=123


    In order to provide spider friendly URL, I have changed the URLs like below. (I understand this is no longer required, most of the spiders can handle the dynamic urls)
    http://mywebsite.com/showProduct.php/productId/123


    But it looks like the spider friendly URLs really hurt my page rank, rather than help. Basically spiders will see each of the following URLs as totally different urls
    http://mywebsite.com/showProduct.php/productId/123
    http://mywebsite.com/showProduct.php/productId/124

    But if they see the url below,
    http://mywebsite.com/showProduct.php?productId=123
    http://mywebsite.com/showProduct.php?productId=123

    then the page rank will go to showProduct.php

    You can notice this in discussion forums, where a new thread which created, which uses this format showThread?id=123 , will immediately show a pagerank similar to any other thread, but if you use /showThread/id/123 it may not get any page rank.

    Is my assumption correct? Does spider friendly URLs hurt?
     
    hilizbabe, Jul 27, 2006 IP
  2. rumblepup

    rumblepup Peon

    Messages:
    100
    Likes Received:
    2
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    #2
    I take issue with querystring urls, because my website (built on asp.net, which apparently everyhates) has a plethora of them, and I've gotten crawled and received good PR on my product pages.

    For example.

    http://www.cushionsandumbrellas.com/detail.aspx?ID=2

    Now, I don't have a lot of PR, but this page get's regurlarly crawled, and has got a pretty good PR of 3, after 4 months online.

    I don't think google has as much problems as dealing with url like yours or mine. At one point the &id= param was kicked out of the webmaster guidlines, in fact it's still is out, but that didn't stop the goog from crawling the page with that parameter.

    In fact, there are PLENTY of querystring url's out there with good PR. What you need is IBL's to your product page.

    Also, don't keep changing your string parameters without letting google know that you changed the location of the page. That's hard to do with dynamic pages like ours. Make one change and STAY with it, forever. Goog will pick it up in a while. But you have to make it consistent. If your going to do it, do it now. If you have history at your site, DONT DO IT. Get IBL's to your product pages.

    My 2 pennies.
     
    rumblepup, Jul 27, 2006 IP
  3. hilizbabe

    hilizbabe Peon

    Messages:
    4
    Likes Received:
    0
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    #3
    If I get an inbound link to mywebsite.com/showProduct.php/productId/123, it may not help in any way to mywebsite.com/showProduct.php/productId/124

    But if I get an inbound link to mywebsite.com/showProduct.php?productId=123 , it might help
    mywebsite.com/showProduct.php?productId=124

    Is my assumption correct?
     
    hilizbabe, Jul 27, 2006 IP
  4. rumblepup

    rumblepup Peon

    Messages:
    100
    Likes Received:
    2
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    #4
    Maybe not. My pages don't show any relation between ID= numbers.

    I have two products which are pointed to ALOT. They have good PR, the next ID number over, has very little PR. Go figure.

    See what I mean. Your url mywebsite.com/showProduct.php?productId=124 is a REAL URL, as long as there is a REAL link to it. An old fashioned hyperlink. Better would be a good anchor text link, but I'm sure you have that in your product short description.
     
    rumblepup, Jul 27, 2006 IP