With some trepidation....I enter into this discussion.. BACKGROUND: I'm a Sr. Systems Architect at one of the nation's premier SEO firms and premier plus sponsor to this past week's SES conference in Chicago (please don't misinterpret as arrogance - see http://www.jupiterevents.com/sew/fall04/) Additionally, our company is on the board with SEMPO and participate regularly in ongoing discussions regarding Search Engine strategies).
MYTH: dynamic url's don't matter to spiders REALITY: well...that depends on what kind of search results you want. While a spider doesn't STOP in reading a URL which contains parameters, it will strongly favor one without them (if you they both contain the same target keywords). Why you say?...well, spiders love STATIC content. All of the search engine reps agree (this past week at the conference, I cornered askJeeves and Google)...STATIC content (or at least the appearance of) gets a higher ranking because of the probability that that content won't change. Nothing more frustrating to a search engine (and users) to display results of a search and the have the user click to a broken link...makes them look bad. SIDENOTE: In Jacob's example of 'catv dallas', his best result was #1 in yahoo and worst was #7 with Google. While this may seem impressive, the reality is, 'catv dallas' didn't even register on overture's inventory analysis tool. In fact, world wide, the term 'catv' was only requested 2399 times for the month of November. That's WORLDWIDE. So - of course your rankings were good Jacob! ;o) Additionally, the phrase 'entertainment jobs' ranked well for showbizjobs.com because it was the HOMEPAGE. No dynamic URL's there! If it sounds like I'm doggin' you Jacob..I apologize....just trying to clear the air about what people believe about search engines and what the reality is.. Hope that helps... Johnny Thompson Z�nch Communications, Inc. http://www.zunch.com -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jacob Cameron Sent: Friday, December 17, 2004 10:49 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: Search Engine Friendly URLs We are submitting each dynamic page using submittal software that spiders the site and sends them one at a time 5 minutes apart. For a 100% dynamic site example, type this into any of the top 3 search engines: catv dallas Each one will return a different sub-page of my clients site: catvdallas.com You'll see that everything runs through the index.cfm page. I chose this site because it has no meta tags or search engine optimization. It is all there because spiders can read dynamic content. Of course I have clients that rank very high for their submittals for standard websites. I also have a lot more clients that get good dynamic results, the best is showbizjobs.com, search for: entertainment jobs, universal jobs, Downey studios jobs Jacob -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Kevin Fricke Sent: Friday, December 17, 2004 9:46 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: Search Engine Friendly URLs Jacob, Do you have some example sites? I have still found this to be a problem. Are you submitting each dynamic page or are the seach engines finding them? Thanks! Kevin -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Jacob Cameron Sent: Friday, December 17, 2004 8:39 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: Search Engine Friendly URLs I personally think that it has not been an issue this century, and find the effort an exercise in futility. I do a lot of SEO and have clients with top 3 ranking using Fusebox style sites on MSN, Google, and Yahoo. Jacob -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jake Sent: Friday, December 17, 2004 6:09 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Search Engine Friendly URLs Thanks for the history. That puts all the pieces together I've heard discussion about. So do you think it's really that big of a deal these days to make the /index.cfm/action/something syntax? Or is it just a legacy thing that people hold onto more for nostalgia than for necessity? Jake Daniel Elmore wrote: >The term "search engine safe" was coined in the early search engine >days because spiders would skip links with &'s and ?'s when indexing >your site. >The reason, AFAIK, was because the search engines didn't want to store >pages with dynamic content. Thinking it would degrade the accuracy of >keyword searches. This became a ridiculous idea as the web matured. >Many static pages are generated dynamically and most pages that use >query strings are actually creating "static" content. A link to a >product description page for example. So to get around this people >started writing links like so: >http://www.mysite.com/index.cfm/action/something > >and then using a filter to convert the link. This fooled the spiders >into thinking it's a link to a page with static content. There are >plenty of web filters for the various middleware languages that allow >your web server to translate that url into the actual url. > >Things have slowly changed though and the spider bots are starting to >allow query strings with more and more attributes. So the value of the >web filters and the work involved to code your links like that is >degrading rapidly. > >So in a nutshell, (I just realized that this tangent has not specially >answered your question) a search engine safe URL is constituted by >having a URL with no query string syntax (& and = and &). > > >-----Original Message----- >From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On >Behalf Of Jake >Sent: Friday, December 17, 2004 2:07 PM >To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >Subject: Search Engine Friendly URLs > >All, > >What is the consensus on what constitutes a "search engine safe" URL? >Would something like: > >www.mysite.com/index.cfm?action=something > >or > >www.mysite.com/index.cfm?action=something&ID=190 > >be SE safe? > >Jake > >---------------------------------------------------------- >To post, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe: > http://www.dfwcfug.org/form_MemberUnsubscribe.cfm >To subscribe: > http://www.dfwcfug.org/form_MemberRegistration.cfm > > > >---------------------------------------------------------- >To post, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe: > http://www.dfwcfug.org/form_MemberUnsubscribe.cfm >To subscribe: > http://www.dfwcfug.org/form_MemberRegistration.cfm > > > > > > ---------------------------------------------------------- To post, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe: http://www.dfwcfug.org/form_MemberUnsubscribe.cfm To subscribe: http://www.dfwcfug.org/form_MemberRegistration.cfm ---------------------------------------------------------- To post, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe: http://www.dfwcfug.org/form_MemberUnsubscribe.cfm To subscribe: http://www.dfwcfug.org/form_MemberRegistration.cfm ---------------------------------------------------------- To post, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe: http://www.dfwcfug.org/form_MemberUnsubscribe.cfm To subscribe: http://www.dfwcfug.org/form_MemberRegistration.cfm ---------------------------------------------------------- To post, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe: http://www.dfwcfug.org/form_MemberUnsubscribe.cfm To subscribe: http://www.dfwcfug.org/form_MemberRegistration.cfm ---------------------------------------------------------- To post, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe: http://www.dfwcfug.org/form_MemberUnsubscribe.cfm To subscribe: http://www.dfwcfug.org/form_MemberRegistration.cfm
