Is it a problem if a URL has too many backslashes in its address?
-
The ecommerce platform of the site that I am working on generates URLs that contain ID Codes for each different product category, color variations, styles, etc.
An example of a URL for a specific product includes:
www.example.com/women/denim-jeans/py/c/109/np/108/p/3834.html
Is it a problem for search engine crawlers if the URL address has so many backslashes in its address?
Appreciate your feedback.
-
Thank you for all of your feedback.
Unfortunately, this website is a on a old propitiatory platform that requires to have these long URL strings, but thankfully there are no separate pages for each of the backslash categories.
For now, I have to accept having these long URLs and just make sure all the correct pages are submitted in sitemap.
Thank you again for you all of your feedback. This was very helpful!
-
To be clear, what type of cart system does the site use? VirtueMart? Magento?
I agree with the posts above, in that sometimes it doesn't hurt, but at the same time, you aren't doing the product pages any favors. Two ways to look at this would be:
1. Having the URL structure set up like you example will still get the pages indexed, if they are included in a sitemap, and submitted correctly, furthermore if the content on those pages is a good match.
2. Having the pages set up that way will limit the ranking potential of those pages, by having a long URL, without relevant keywords in place. Let me explain:
In your example:
www.example.com/women/denim-jeans/py/c/109/np/108/p/3834.htmlYou have the opportunity to potentially rank for "womens denim jeans" using that url. This somewhat limits the ranking potential of the items, as they are all tied into one specific category, that being "womens denim jeans". Lets look at another example:
www.example.com/women/denim-jeans/faded-wash/indigo-dye-item-details3834.html
In the above URL, you are much more specific in the style and type of jean it is, and a user will know (and a search engine) what the page is specifically about. Style, color, keyword, category, etc. Since you most likely have a large catalog of product types, why limit your item details to a bunch of unnecessary numbers and slashes?
I would also look at a way of using product markup to make the items stand out further in search results. Google likes to see "the complete package". Using clean specific URL's and schema product markup tells a much clearer pricture than /py/c/109/np/108/p/3834.html. Depending on the CMS used, there may be a component or plugin that takes care of the product markup for you, from the item description and details.
Hope this helps!
-
Hi there,
Ryan is correct - high numbers of subfolders like this aren't ideal. That takes into account real and virtual subfolders (i.e. "subfolders" that have no content on them but are generated by a CMS versus subfolders that contain landing pages).
Ideally, these would be rewritten to www.example.com/women/denim/product1.html, etc. You will need to check with the developers why the CMS creates these subfolders and what can be done about it.
Google is much better at indexing / ranking URLs like this than it was a few years ago, and it's not exactly a deathblow if you're told that this can't be changed. It's still not ideal though, so check whether it can be simplified.
-
I would want to have as few as possible. You have to ask yourself whether or not all those folders are actually needed. As far as indexing, it's more about the hops than the number of backslashes. For instance if a crawler has to go to /denim-jeans then to /py then /c then /c109 then /np then /108 then /p then /3834.html it will likely have some indexing issues, but if the next hop after /denim-jeans is from a link that goes to /py/c/109/np/108/p/3834.html then it likely wouldn't cause any issues for the crawler, but again it's a nasty structure and you have to ask yourself if it is all really necessary.
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
-
Www. or naked url?
Hi everyone, I am about to start a new WordPress site and debating whether to use www or naked URL for the URL structure. Using naked URL makes sense from a branding and minimalistic perspective but I am reading that using naked URL might have some technical deficiencies. Specifically, cookie issues and DNS can't be cname. Are these technical deficiencies still valid when using naked url? Would appreciate any feedback on this! Cheers
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nsereke1 -
Duplicate content with URLs
Hi all, Do you think that is possible to have duplicate content issues because we provide a unique image with 5 different URLs ? In the HTML code pages, just one URL is provide. It's enough for that Google don't see the other URLs or not ? Example, in this article : http://www.parismatch.com/People/Kim-Kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix-1092112 The same image is available on: http://cdn-parismatch.ladmedia.fr/var/news/storage/images/paris-match/people/kim-kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix-1092112/15629236-1-fre-FR/Kim-Kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix.jpg http://resize-parismatch.ladmedia.fr/img/var/news/storage/images/paris-match/people/kim-kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix-1092112/15629236-1-fre-FR/Kim-Kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix.jpg http://resize1-parismatch.ladmedia.fr/img/var/news/storage/images/paris-match/people/kim-kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix-1092112/15629236-1-fre-FR/Kim-Kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix.jpg http://resize2-parismatch.ladmedia.fr/img/var/news/storage/images/paris-match/people/kim-kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix-1092112/15629236-1-fre-FR/Kim-Kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix.jpg http://resize3-parismatch.ladmedia.fr/img/var/news/storage/images/paris-match/people/kim-kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix-1092112/15629236-1-fre-FR/Kim-Kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix.jpg Thank you very much for your help. Julien
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Julien.Ferras0 -
Duplicate URLs ending with #!
Hi guys, Does anyone know why a site can contain duplicate URLs ending with hastag & exclamation mark e.g. https://site.com.au/#! We are finding a lot of these URLs (as duplicates) and i was wondering what they are from developer standpoint? And do you think it's worth the time and effort adding a rel canonical tag or 301 to these URLs eventhough they're not getting indexed by Google? Cheers, Chris
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jayoliverwright0 -
URL mapping for site migration
Hi all! I'm currently working on a migration for a large e-commerce site. The old one has around 2.5k urls, the new one 7.5k. I now need to sort out the redirects from one to the other. This is proving pretty tricky, as the URL structure has changed site wide. There doesn't seem to be any consistent rules either so using regex doesn't really work. By and large, the copy appears to be the same though. Does anybody know of a tool I can crawl the sites with that will export the crawled url and related copy into a spreadsheet? That way I can crawl both sites and compare the copy to match them up. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Blink-SEO0 -
Changing the spellings of titles and URl changes
Hi, Changing the spellings of titles and URl changes We identifies 500+ titles with some issues like spellings and punctuations and short or too long. We want to change them, but the titles are connected with the URL's when we change the titles the URl's change as well. My questions are 1. Is it a good way to change them all in one shot or do few daily 2. As the URl's change will Google index drop the old pages as they would be 404 and index new ones? 3. Will we have chances to have drop in traffic due to this? 4. Any way to redirect? as we have a Drupal website Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mtthompsons0 -
Uppercase in URLs = Dupe Content
Hi Mozzers, My developers recently changed a bunch of the pages I am working on into all lower case (something I know ideally should have been done in the first place). The URLs have sat for about a week as lower case without 301 redirecting the old upper-case URLs to these pages. In Google Webmaster Tools, I'm seeing Google recognize them as duplicate meta tags, title tags, etc. See image: http://screencast.com/t/KloiZMKOYfa We're 301 redirecting the old URLs to the new ones ASAP, but is there anything else I should do? Any chance Google is going to noindex these pages because it seems them as dupes until I fix them? Sometimes I can see both pages in the SERPs if I use personalized results, and it scares me: http://screencast.com/t/4BL6iOhz4py3 Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Travis-W0 -
Where to put a page ID in a URL?
Hello, My company is going to change URLs to example.com/category or example.com/product. When we will change the URLs to product or category pages somehow we have to check whether the requested page is from category table in DB or from products table (this gives much speed to page load time). So we have to choose how to make the different product and category pages.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | komeksimas
Programmers said that we need to insert id to URL. So the question is: Which is the better way to place an id to an URL? example.com/product-name?id=111 example.com/product-name/111 example.com/product_name-111 Or maybe we should use some other punctuation mark to separate id from product name? p.s. I have read Dynamic URLs vs. static URLs by Google and it still didn't answered which is the best for all of the pages. Somehow others solve this problem by typing only the names to the URL, but could anyone tell what that technology should be?0 -
Google News URL Structure
Hi there folks I am looking for some guidance on Google News URLs. We are restructuring the site. A main traffic driver will be the traffic we get from Google News. Most large publishers use: www.site.com/news/12345/this-is-the-title/ Others use www.example.com/news/celebrity/12345/this-is-the-title/ etc. www.example.com/news/celebrity-news/12345/this-is-the-title/ www.example.com/celebrity-news/12345/this-is-the-title/ (Celebrity is a channel on Google News so should we try and follow that format?) www.example.com/news/celebrity-news/this-is-the-title/12345/ www.example.com/news/celebrity-news/this-is-the-title-12345/ (unique ID no at the end and part of the title URL) www.example.com/news/celebrity-news/celebrity-name/this-is-the-title-12345/ Others include the date. So as you can see there are so many combinations and there doesnt seem to be any unity across news sites for this format. Have you any advice on how to structure these URLs? Particularly if we want to been seen as an authority on the following topics: fashion, hair, beauty, and celebrity news - in particular "celebrity name" So should the celebrity news section be www.example.com/news/celebrity-news/celebrity-name/this-is-the-title-12345/ or what? This is for a completely new site build. Thanks Barry
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Deepti_C0