Dynamic URLs vs. static URLs

[wii]

I find this article from Google very interesting for all you SEO fans, this may change the way people think about SEO friendly URLs, take a look:

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/09/dynamic-urls-vs-static-urls.html

[Godspeed]

I didn't really think there was a difference as far as Google is concerned but now it looks like Google themselves have confirmed it.

[DJDarknez]

I was always of the mind that vbulletin had static-type URLs. Like, you can change the name of a thread time and time again, but that thread ID will never change. But if your URL tried to mimic the thread title, then the URL would have to change if the thread title did, which would make the thread "disappear" to search engines that had already found it.

Guess I was wrong.

[Chousho]

Thanks, that was quite informative. It's a bit ironic, seeing as how many people clamour for "SEO friendly URLs" for VB, and here comes Google, the king of search engines (currently, anyway) claiming that SEO friendly might not be quite so friendly.

[MRGTB]

Well it's it's funny really. I was reading an interview done by MATT from IPB on the Admin Zone about an hour ago, and in that interview he was asked about Static URL's v's Dynamic URL's. And the answer he gave made a lot of sense. He said about 80% of the web uses dynamic URL's, so it stands to reason that Google must realise this by now themselves and be able to index them proper. I thought that comment was spot on!

I just read part of that link you posted above (gonna read the rest now). But I picked-up on something posted in that article, which I will quote below.


Fact: We can crawl dynamic URLs and interpret the different parameters. We might have problems crawling and ranking your dynamic URLs if you try to make your urls look static and in the process hide parameters which offer the Googlebot valuable information. One recommendation is to avoid reformatting a dynamic URL to make it look static. It's always advisable to use static content with static URLs as much as possible, but in cases where you decide to use dynamic content, you should give us the possibility to analyze your URL structure and not remove information by hiding parameters and making them look static.

So does that mean using a program like vBSEO is accually doing the worse thing for vBulletin, and your better off just leaving well alone instead?

Have you read the replies to that post, that article as stirred-up a right hornets nest. The SEO freaks are going plumb crazy, because they don't know what to do anymore. Or if what their doing now is right or wrong! Man, it's so funny!

Jezz, I'm so glad I run a website with static pages, and no re-writes. :D

[wii]

Here´s a post from Joe Ward from vBSEO:

http://www.vbseo.com/f104/google-annouces-theyd-rather-have-dynamic-urls-27100/index2.html#post169329

[MRGTB]

In his reply, he seems to talk about what google can, and cannot do with their algorithms. Which I find hard to accept. He doesn't work for google, and as such has no idea what their algorithms can, and cannot do.

Plus the main point in that google article (which has caused the biggest problems). He says, if you you have dynamic URL's your better leaving them alone. As their algorithms does all the hard work for you to index those pages no problem, and using a SEO tool too re-write them could cause more harm than good. And seeing as only google knowns how their algorithms work, how can you ever be 100% sure your url-rewrites are wrong, and maybe doing more harm than good?

That's the biggest cause for concern right now.

[wii]

I really think this is one of the most important news from Google in a long time when I think about all the talk about SEO friendly URLs everywhere, even here at vBulletin.

[Gladius]

I find the entire concept of SEO abhorrent. Webmasters should be wanting to spend time on the content and the search engines should be smart enough to find good, relevant content. As it is now, every jackass with crap content can get a high SE rank as long as they do a lot of SEO. I view it as cheating and a major flaw on the part of Google for encouraging it for so long.

[MRGTB]

Webmasters do spend time on content, they also spend time on SEO also. Both can be done you know at the same time!

Anybody serious about their site, knows that both matter when it comes to PR.

Whats the the point of adding loads of content when your site is about as SEO friendly as a flat tyre. And besides, SEO is not just about static URL's. There is an auwful lot more too SEO than that, that's just the very tip of iceberg

[David Grove]

For extra credit, tell us what type of URL this Google blog post has. :rolleyes:

Hint:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/09/dynamic-urls-vs-static-urls.html

[MRGTB]

yea, I know. I read the reply about that ;)

But you have to remember though, they would of course know the "right" way to re-write dynamic URL's for there own search engine. :p

[Wayne Luke]

What the article actually says is this:

If your URL requires extra parameters to work properly and removing those parameters to make a static URL will affect the functioning of the page, then don't do it.

The URL above (the google article) does not require extra parameters to show properly. Therefore it doesn't need to be dynamic. SEO URLs or not, the link above will be valid today and it will be valid 5 years from now. Above all else you need to make sure that your URLs remain the same and accessible over time. This is how you will gain rank in the search engines. If you change all your links suddenly it will hurt whether they are dynamic or "static". That right there is something to think about.

[MRGTB]

Another thing it also seems to be saying, is that google can look at dynamic URL's and take certain information out of them to lead to other areas on your site which make sense to the bot. And changing them to static can harm that if you hide certain dynamic parts in the dynamic original url address to make it look more seo friendly pretty.

[wii]

To be honest, I prefer the vBulletin links as they look now, if I want to link to a specific thread, I just write the threadid.

[a7878]

I'm always wondering if the "use search engine friendly links" that many CMS and online shop software offer are related to the static link phenomenon. It looks to me that the dynamic links of our psp repair (http://www.portatronics.com) website are crawled by search engines just fine.

[Floris]

Don't confuse showthread.php?t=1 === /puppy-love-1/
with showthread.php?s=iu3h4fi3uhf&t=1 === /puppy-love/iu3h4fi3uhf/1/

The former == google doesn't care, that's just pretty for users.
The latter == google cares, because it uses dynamic content that changes (like a session hash) to make a unique url to same content.

It's about identifying 1 unique content, how pretty the url looks is only interesting to the end user.

[Gladius]

It's not like anyone smart enough to know how to rewrite urls would actually be dumb enough to rewrite them in such a way that session hashes would be listed in them...