Building URL's is there a difference between = and - ?
-
I have a Product Based Search site where the URL's are built dynamically based on the User input Parameters
Currently I use the '=' t o built the URL based on the search parameters
for eg:
/condition=New/keywords=Ford+Focus/category=Exterior etc
Is there any value in using hypen's instead of = ? Could you please help me in any general guidelines to follow
-
This is a really weird blend of virtual folder and CGI-style parameters. Typically, we'd see a URL either like:
(1) /page.php?condition=New&keywords=Ford+Focus&category=Exterior
OR
(2) /New/Ford-Focus/Exterior
I think either would be preferable to what you have. By using the hybrid style, Google isn't going to understand how to interpret your URLs, and it could lead to some minor SEO problems. I don't think it'll disrupt crawling or anything huge, but it's always dicey to use strange URL formats. If you can move to something like (2), I really think that's preferable, but even the longer (1) style would probably be safer.
Honestly, though, I've never seen this style of URL in the wild, so I'm making an educated guess here. I just find that different isn't always good, in these cases.
-
I'm assuming that Irving means "not letting" (sorry if that's not the case) - spinning out every search into a unique page can definitely cause some problems with thin content. Not sure if that's what you're doing, but I'd tread carefully.
-
I would advise letting the engines to get to every single search URL that users generate. You will be creating many duplicate pages. You can choose to block the engines from getting to any internal search results or perhaps a segment of the search results if they don't conflict with your category pages.
-
Hello,
I would advise you to use a hyphen instead of an equal sign. It looks better when your URL is displayed and in this article from Google's Webmasters http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=76329 "We recommend that you use hyphens (-) instead of underscores (_) in your URLs."
they recommend using a hyphen instead of an underscore, so I can only assume that a hyphen is definetly a better choice than an equal sign
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
My website's pages are not being indexed correctly
Hi, One of our websites, which is actually a price comparison engine, facing indexing problem at Google. When we check “site:mywebsite.com “, there are lots of pages indexed which are not from mywebsite.com but from merchants websites. The index result page also shows merchant’s page title. In some cases the title is from merchant’s site but when the given link is accessed it points to mywebsite.com/index. Also the cache displays the merchant’s product page as the last indexed version rather than showing ours. The mywebsite.com has quite few Merchants that send us their product feed. Those products are listed on comparison page with prices. The merchant’s links on comparison page are all no-follow links but some of the (not all) merchant’s product pages are indexed against mywebsite.com as mentioned above instead of product comparison page of mywebsite.com How can we fix the issue? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | digitalMSB0 -
What's another good SEO plugin for WordPress besides Yoast?
I know most people typically use Yoast, we use it on our sites, but we have one site where Yoast is causing a conflict. I wanted to investigate some other options and see what the best solution may be. Anyone else have an effective plugin they like?
Technical SEO | | AdamWormann0 -
GWT returning 200 for robots.txt, but it's actually returning a 404?
Hi, Just wondering if anyone has had this problem before. I'm just checking a client's GWT and I'm looking at their robots.txt file. In GWT, it's saying that it's all fine and returns a 200 code, but when I manually visit (or click the link in GWT) the page, it gives me a 404 error. As far as I can tell, the client has made no changes to the robots.txt recently, and we definitely haven't either. Has anyone had this problem before? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | White.net0 -
How to Remove /feed URLs from Google's Index
Hey everyone, I have an issue with RSS /feed URLs being indexed by Google for some of our Wordpress sites. Have a look at this Google query, and click to show omitted search results. You'll see we have 500+ /feed URLs indexed by Google, for our many category pages/etc. Here is one of the example URLs: http://www.howdesign.com/design-creativity/fonts-typography/letterforms/attachment/gilhelveticatrade/feed/. Based on this content/code of the XML page, it looks like Wordpress is generating these: <generator>http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.2</generator> Any idea how to get them out of Google's index without 301 redirecting them? We need the Wordpress-generated RSS feeds to work for various uses. My first two thoughts are trying to work with our Development team to see if we can get a "noindex" meta robots tag on the pages, by they are dynamically-generated pages...so I'm not sure if that will be possible. Or, perhaps we can add a "feed" paramater to GWT "URL Parameters" section...but I don't want to limit Google from crawling these again...I figure I need Google to crawl them and see some code that says to get the pages out of their index...and THEN not crawl the pages anymore. I don't think the "Remove URL" feature in GWT will work, since that tool only removes URLs from the search results, not the actual Google index. FWIW, this site is using the Yoast plugin. We set every page type to "noindex" except for the homepage, Posts, Pages and Categories. We have other sites on Yoast that do not have any /feed URLs indexed by Google at all. Side note, the /robots.txt file was previously blocking crawling of the /feed URLs on this site, which is why you'll see that note in the Google SERPs when you click on the query link given in the first paragraph.
Technical SEO | | M_D_Golden_Peak0 -
New Website, New URL, New Content - What do we do with the old site? Are 301's the only option?
We've just built a new site for a client. They were adamant on changing the url. The new site is entirely new content, however the subject mater is the same. Some pages are even titled very similarly. Is is advisable to keep the old site running, and link it to the new site? Permanently, or temporarily? Do we simply place redirects from the old site the new? Old site was 30 pages, new site is 80 pages. So redirects won't be available to all the new pages. It seems a shame to trash the old site, it is getting some good traffic, and the content - although outdated is unique and of a high quality. Old url is 4+ yrs old, the new url is new. Some enlightened opinions would be greatly welcomed. Thanks
Technical SEO | | MarketsOnline0 -
Found a Typo in URL, what's the best practice to fix it?
Wordpress 3.4, Yoast, Multisite The URL is supposed to be "www.myexample.com/great-site" but I just found that it's "www.myexample.com/gre-atsite" It is a relatively new site but we already pointed several internal links to "www.myexample.com/gre-atsite" What's the best practice to correct this? Which option is more desirable? 1.Creating a new page I found that Yoast has "301 redirect" option in the Advanced tap Can I just create a new page(exact same page) and put noindex, nofollow and redirect it to http://www.myexample.com/great-site OR 2. htacess redirect rule simply change the URL to http://www.myexample.com/great-site and update it, and add Options +FollowSymLinks RewriteEngine On
Technical SEO | | joony2008
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^http://www.myexample.com/gre-atsite$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.myexample.com/great-site$1 [R=301,L]0 -
Does adding Tool Tips to a site hurt it's SEO?
I'm wanting to add tool tips to my site as it's intended for non-technical people that are wanting high tech equipment and services. I thought that by adding tool tips, I could clear any confusion they may have about a particular word right there rather then them having to search for what it means. I did some research online and saw that it may hurt SEO ratings but wanted to verify here first before deciding.
Technical SEO | | sDevik0 -
Webmaster tools lists a large number (hundreds)of different domains linking to my website, but only a few are reported on SEOMoz. Please explain what's going on?
Google's webmaster tools lists hundreds of links to my site, but SEOMoz only reports a few of them. I don't understand why that would be. Can anybody explain it to me? Is there someplace to I can go to alert SEOMoz to this issue?
Technical SEO | | dnfealkoff0