[thelist] query string manipulation

aardvark roselli at earthlink.net
Fri Sep 7 17:39:03 CDT 2001


> From: ".jeff" <jeff at members.evolt.org>
> 
> > I'm saying you have one data point, and some vague
> > description of how "some" search engines are working.
> > In other words, I don't find your anecdote compelling
> > enough to make an action item.
> 
> if by one data point you mean development company, then you are
> correct. however, if you mean one site, then you're gravely mistaken. 
> we've applied our development expertise and search engine knowledge to
> many of our clients' sites and have seen marked improvements with
> everyone of them the closer we get to a pure directory structure. 
> time and again we've been surprised by the increase in search engine
> indexing, especially in those cases where the content itself did not
> change at all -- only the url structure.

i'd like to echo this anecdote as well...

i try to use what i call "human-readable" URLs, which basically 
means the directory structure can be understood when presented 
in the URL as if it were a breadcrumb trail of the site structure.... 
this directory structure can be physical or virtual...

since i started doing that a couple years ago, those sites with the 
human-redable URLs have gotten significant boosts in search 
engine rankings, even without any content changes...  and nobody 
appears to be linking to those pages enough for cross-linking to be 
a factor... the nice thing is i didn't adopt this method for SEs, i did 
it so users had another method to guage their location within my 
sites...

this URL, for instance:
http://www.foo.org/recreation/soccer_club/lockport_lightning_travel_l
eague/

would probably receive much better ranking than:
http://www.foo.org/soccer_42.html





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