Does search-engine friendly URLS still matter?

*looks at topic title*

So guys, does it?

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yes of course, check all the url's from this forum and the URL's used by most of the blogsites. Since the last few month I rewrite lamost every url in new projects..

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I don't think it really matters. I mean it is a hint for the search engine, but not enough to give you better rankings.

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I don't think it really matters. I mean it is a hint for the search engine, but not enough to give you better rankings.

Its the same question about keywords in the domain name, of course only a keyword rich URL won't give you a top listing but it will help...

... and I have the idea that a non querystring URL gets faster a PR...

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Regarding the pr thing, I will agree.

It seems that search engines (google actually) mark of query string urls as non permanent, at least for some time.

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Regarding the pr thing, I will agree.

It seems that search engines (google actually) mark of query string urls as non permanent, at least for some time.

the it is usefull to use them

I dont think it matters that much. Google wants to provide good content for its visitors. So, what does the URL has to do with the content. Just see the URLs of old pages from Stanford and all. They have more than 2 subdomains. Still, they dominate the results at times. I think what matters is what Googlebot tells it. Nothing else.

Atleast it isn't fair u know. Anyone can make the URL friendly. Google doesnt like SEO itself. It prefers sites with less SEO. Thats the reason why Google gives more value to URLs that it finds itself and not the ones submitted (This is true. It worked for me and I wasnt alone).

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I dont think it matters that much. Google wants to provide good content for its visitors. So, what does the URL has to do with the content. Just see the URLs of old pages from Stanford and all. They have more than 2 subdomains. Still, they dominate the results at times. I think what matters is what Googlebot tells it. Nothing else.

Atleast it isn't fair u know. Anyone can make the URL friendly. Google doesnt like SEO itself. It prefers sites with less SEO. Thats the reason why Google gives more value to URLs that it finds itself and not the ones submitted (This is true. It worked for me and I wasnt alone).

yes right I never to submit URL's to Google, but I think pages with SEO friendly URL's are listed higher look all this Blog sites...

Clean URLs and dynamic generated ones are treated exactly the same in Googles searches according to Vanessa Fox (Google webmaster team) in this video . The important thing is to make sure Google and any other search engine can find the pages which is also pretty simple (just use a sitemap). Apparently the issues regarding permanence of page has gone away simply because the nature of the web has changed. The reasons Blogs appear so highly in search results is down to fresh content ,supposedly!

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Exactly. This is mostly like a "SEO tradition" as before 10-15 years dynamic pages were mostly non permanent pages (eg. a search page)

In our days where 99% of the web is based on database driven sites, it is obvious that dynamic pages will be considered as permanent.

BUT as they can still be non permanent google will slow down a little on pages that have query strings and have small ammount of links.An example is that urls with query stings (?xxxx...) get pagerank in more time than usual.

The same is true for indexing in some way. A great example is our whois tool. When it was hosted on its own domain, the whois pages were like domain.com/?domain=xxx.com The whois pages were not linked from the site itself, but we had hundrends of links from other sites. Google was very slow on indexing the whois pages, and in most cases it wouldn't at all, or haven't send any traffic to them.

Now the url for a whois page is webdigity.com/ws/xxx.com and there are already about 1000 indexed pages within 1-2 weeks, and google sends traffic to the whois pages.

Of course the difference is not so big, but I guess it is a small hint for the SEO process.

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yes the same for directories with SEO friendly URL's,

I have also some link lists on other websites using a quesrystring, never got the  google traffic on this sites like on the pages from my "1 Link directory"

But, from my experience, I get more traffic and mostly search traffic for my site with dynamic URL than the static URL site. I've done equal promotion and all.

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But, from my experience, I get more traffic and mostly search traffic for my site with dynamic URL than the static URL site. I've done equal promotion and all.

but do tested both? the same page with static and dyn. URL?

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