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.htaccess and SEO question.

Posted: Thu Aug 24, 2006 10:59 am
by Dale
Ok I just want to know which of these URL's (created using a .htaccess file) is better for SEO ?

Example 1: http://www.foo.com/bar.php?story=1
Example 2: http://www.foo.com/bar/1
Example 3: http://www.foo.com/bar/1/
Example 4: http://www.foo.com/bar/1.html
Example 5: http://www.foo.com/bar/1/index.html

??

Posted: Thu Aug 24, 2006 11:03 am
by Luke
Get ready for some debate!

I personally still don't know the answer to this question. Every time somebody brings it up there are 100 different answers. I would really like to know for sure too :?

Posted: Thu Aug 24, 2006 11:07 am
by Dale
The Ninja Space Goat wrote:Get ready for some debate!
Well i suppose that's what a forum is for... mass debate :?

Though it would be nice to get a decent suggestion on which would be best as i've started using .htaccess files manually edited by yours truly since about 5am this morning. :)

Posted: Thu Aug 24, 2006 11:09 am
by Luke
Oh... and I'm not so sure this is the right forum to post this in.

Posted: Thu Aug 24, 2006 11:12 am
by feyd
Last I checked, the big search engines don't care about that sort of stuff anymore. Read their optimization guides though, they may be illuminating.

I think now it's more of a convienance to users who wish to copy'n'paste the url somewhere.

Posted: Thu Aug 24, 2006 11:12 am
by Jenk
what you are actually refering to is the use of mod_rewrite and not .htaccess specifically.

I've always been told that some spiders ignore querystrings because the idea is that a page is a page, whilst querystrings can and often are used to manipulate the data on said page, whilst it is still the same page.

One note: Google definitely do ignore the querystring var "id="

On the flip side of the argument, mod_rewrite also fools spiders into thinking your site has many many more pages to it than it actually might have.

http://www.example.com/index/foo/bar

and

http://www.example.com/index/bar/foo

are the same page with 2 vars, but to a spider they will appear as two different pages.

Posted: Thu Aug 24, 2006 5:24 pm
by Dale
Thanks, i'll go with Example 3.