Google Says Don’t Rewrite URLs

11 March 2009

On Monday, Google wrote "avoid reformatting a dynamic URL to make it look static". But really, that's some quite selective quoting.

In one of the few forums I frequent, people have been giving some quite knee-jerk reactions to this, but I think what Google are saying is *think* before rewriting your URLs - not "don't rewrite URLs". They give some quite good examples of quite poorly rewritten URLs, such as these:

• www.example.com/article/bin/answer.foo/en/3/98971298178906/URL

• www.example.com/article/bin/answer.foo/language=en/answer=3/sid=98971298178906/query=URL

• www.example.com/article/bin/answer.foo/language/en/answer/3/sid/98971298178906/query/URL

• www.example.com/article/bin/answer.foo/en,3,98971298178906,URL

With the long number (98971298178906) being a session ID. Google is saying that, over the years, they've managed to filter out bits of strings like ?sid=98971298178906, but when you have the session ID in a static-looking URL it becomes a whole lot harder for them to ignore that bit of URL.

So what you're going to end up with is duplicate content across multiple 'static' pages.

If you ask me though, anyone who has been rewriting URLs like this:

www.example.com/article/bin/answer.foo?language=en&answer=3&sid=98971298178906&query=URL

To a URL like this:

www.example.com/article/bin/answer.foo/en,3,98971298178906,URL

Is clearly missing the point of rewriting URLs. Not only do Google themselves say during their post "keep your URLs short", a rewritten URL should be human-readable and be informative of the page content.

So to all those swearing never to rewrite a URL again at risk of making Google Higher Beings upset, then go ahead. But I'm still going to rewrite URLs like this:

www.example.com/product/details.php?p=143

To URLs like this:

www.example.com/product/small-chihuahua-coat-143/

Tags: seo