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
-
What to do with existing URL when replatforming and new URL is the same?
We are changing CMS from WordPress to Uberflip. If there is a URL that remains the same I believe we should not create a redirect. However, what happens to the old page? Should it be deleted?
Technical SEO | | maland0 -
What's the best way for users to upload their images to my wordpress site to promote UGC
I have looked at lots of different plugins and wanted a recommendation for an easy way for patients of ours to upload pictures of them out partying and having fun and looking beautiful so future users can see the final results instead of sometimes gory or difficult to understand before and after images. I'd like to give them the opportunity to write captions (like facebook or insta posts and would offer them incentives to do so. I don't want it to be too complicated for them or have too many steps or barriers but I do want it to look nice and slick and modern. Also do you think this would have a positive impact on SEO? I was also thinking of a Q&A app where dentists could get Q&A emails and respond - i've been doing AMA sessions and they've been really successful and I would like to bring it into out site and make it native. Thanks in advance 🙂
Technical SEO | | Smileworks_Liverpool1 -
My 'complete guide' is cannibalising my main product page and hurting rankings
Hi everyone, I have a main page for my blepharoplasty surgical product that I want to rank. It's a pretty in-depth summary for patients to read all about the treatment and look at before and after pictures and there's calls to action in there. It works great and is getting lots of conversions. But I also have a 'complete guide' PDF which is for patients who are really interested in discovering all the technicalities of their eye-lift procedure including medical research, clinical stuff and risks. Now my main page is at position 4 and the complete guide is right below it in 5. So I tried to consolidate by adding the complete guide as a download on the main page. I've looked into rel canonical but don't think it's appropriate here as they are not technically 'duplicates' because they serve different purposes. Then I thought of adding a meta noindex but was not sure whether this was the right thing to do either. My report doesn't get any clicks from the serps, people visit it from the main page. I saw in Wordpress that there's options for the link, one says 'link to media file', 'custom URL' and 'attachment'. I've got the custom URL selected at the moment. There's also a box for 'link rel' which i figure is where I'd put the noindex. If that's the right thing to do, what should go in that box? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | Smileworks_Liverpool0 -
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 -
Matt Cutts says 404 unavailable products on the 'average' ecommerce site.
If you're an ecommerce site owner, will you be changing how you deal with unavailable products as a result of the recent video from Matt Cutts? Will you be moving over to a 404 instead of leaving the pages live still? For us, as more products were becoming unavailable, I had started to worry about the impact of this on the website (bad user experience, Panda issues from bounce rates, etc.). But, having spoken to other website owners, some say it's better to leave the unavailable product pages there as this offers more value (it ranks well so attracts traffic, links to those pages, it allows you to get the product back up quickly if it unexpectedly becomes available, etc.). I guess there's many solutions, for example, using ItemAvailability schema, that might be better than a 404 (custom or not). But then, if it's showing as unavailable on the SERPS, will anyone bother clicking on it anyway...? Would be interested in your thoughts.
Technical SEO | | Coraltoes770 -
Strange URL's indexed
Hi, I got the message "Increase in not found errors" (404 errors) in GWT for one of my website. I did not change anything but I now see a lot of "strange" URL's indexed (~50) : &ui=2&tf=1&shva=1 &cat_id=6&tag_id=31&Remark=In %22%3EAny suggestion on how to fix it ?Erwan
Technical SEO | | johnny1220 -
Hard-working newbie question: benefit of moving my blog to my online store's domain?
Hi all, I've been running an online wine store in Switzerland for a month and have been working hard on SEO (I love learning about it). Anyway, for a couple of years prior to launching the store, I had been running a wine blog whose articles are ranking well in Google. I now want to link the two. My questions are: A) will the addition of the blog (store.com/blog) contribute to the store's domain authority (currently, the blog authority is higher than the site authority)? B) technically, can I 301 the whole blog to store.com/blog? Any help and tips would be appreciated. Thank you!
Technical SEO | | fkupfer0 -
Do you get credit for an external link that points to a page that's being blocked by robots.txt
Hi folks, No one, including me seems to actually know what happens!? To repeat: If site A links to /home.html on site B and site B blocks /home.html in Robots.txt, does site B get credit for that link? Does the link pass PageRank? Will Google still crawl through it? Does the domain get some juice, but not the page? I know there's other ways of doing this properly, but it is interesting no?
Technical SEO | | DaveSottimano0