Static URLs or Dynamic URLs… Which is Better?
I came across a post on the Google Webmaster Central Blog titled Dynamic URLs vs. Static URLs. I personally have had an issue with this topic for quite some time. I have built websites with both types of URLs and I have seen no visible difference in search engine rank between the two. As I have read various search engine optimization articles and guides, search engine friendly URLs are commonly mentioned as a must-use technique.
Don’t get me wrong. I think good, clean URLs are useful for web users and should be used when possible. That being said, I don’t believe they provide any additional value to your search engine rankings and should not be used solely for this purpose. There may be some value to having keyword related text in the URLs but my experience suggests this will not make a significant difference in a website’s overall rank for that particular term.
After reading the post from Google, they suggest the opposite of what conventional wisdom would have you think. What Google says in Dyanmic URLs vs. Static URLs is, “We can crawl dynamic URLs and interpret the different parameters. We might have problems crawling and ranking your dynamic URLs if you try to make your urls look static and in the process hide parameters which offer the Googlebot valuable information. One recommendation is to avoid reformatting a dynamic URL to make it look static. It’s always advisable to use static content with static URLs as much as possible, but in cases where you decide to use dynamic content, you should give us the possibility to analyze your URL structure and not remove information by hiding parameters and making them look static.”
Basically, what Google said is they have no problems reading dynamic URLs. A problem is more likely to occur if a web developer is rewriting URLs rather than just using dynamic URLs. I believe there is still validity in rewriting URLs so that they’re humanly readable and understandable from a customer standpoint but it is obviously not something we need to worry about from a search engine optimization standpoint, at least not according to Google. If you don’t believe me read the post for yourself at: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/09/dynamic-urls-vs-static-urls.html.
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