Numbers (2432423) in URL

[TommyTan]

Hello All Mozers,

Quick question on URL.  I know URL is important and should include keywords and all that but my question is does including numbers (not date or page numbers but numbers for internal use) in the URL affect SEO? For example, www.domain.com/screw-driver,12,1,23345.htm  Is that any better or worse than www.domain.com/screw-driver.htm?

I understand that this is not user friendly but in SEO stand point does it hurt ranking?  What's your opinion on this?

Thank you!

[MoosaHemani]

Numbers in the URL never hurt rankings! It’s just that your URL should be easy to read and follow the standard length... too long URLs might get you in to trouble from user experience as well as from the crawling and indexing point of view.

Search Engine Journal (know blog for SEO and Online Marketing Updates) do use numbers in there URL! http://www.searchenginejournal.com/why-relying-on-organic-search-traffic-alone-is-a-risky-business/65324/ << The URL ends at the number!

Hope this answer your question!

[FedeEinhorn]

Agree! Plus, only letters would consume more computing resources as you need to do a DB query on that text. The more articles/products you have the worse it will become. Numbers will solve that problem.

[superZj]

Numbers in a URL does not have a negative effect on rank. The clearer the URL the better but if you have your keyword in the URL (even with extra numbers) you are okay. Best practices say that dynamic URLs should be converted to SEO friendly urls, this can be done in the settings of your website content management system.

[CleverPhD]

I have not seen numbers in a URL hurt SEO.  I do have issues with commas in your URL as they do not play nice when you copy and paste them.  I would use dashes.

If you are looking to try and become a Google News publisher, Google requires numbers in the URL

https://support.google.com/news/publisher/answer/68323?hl=en

I have also used numbers in the URL to help with my backup 301 redirects

Say you have a url

/articles/34543-slug-goes-here.html

The # in the URL is the article ID in my database.  If I get a error on any one of these urls (and they happen)

/articles/34543-slug-goes-here.htm

/articles/34543-slug-goes-h

/articles/34543-slu

/articles/34543

/articles/34543-slug-goes-Here.html

etc

My system just has to match on the ID of the article and then will 301 to the correct URL.

I think the key is not to overkill on the numbers to make them too many digits long etc.

Also, if you are only depending on slugs to differentiate URLs then you have to have a system to make sure they are unique each time.  Using an ID number in the URL ensures they are unique.