How ugly is your URL?

Posted by Laura Bergells

November 16, 2006

Ugly URL? You have heard of “Ugly Betty”.

Now meet “Ugly URL”.

What’s Ugly about URL?
Last month, Google changed its webmaster guidelines regarding dynamically generated content. Google can now index the ugly URLs with the “&id=” or “?” in the address bar. So the question I get from clients is, “does this mean that I don’t have to re-write my dynamically generated URLs?”

On the contrary! You should keep your URL rewrite methodology in play for your dynamically generated pages. Because quite frankly, Google webmaster guidelines always used to say that it COULD index the ugly urls…but that results vary and that ugly URLs often take longer to index. Case in point….I know of quite a few sites that used dynamically generated content with the ugly URLs — and they still got indexed — and this was over a year ago.

The real question is: are ugly URLs effective and memorable? And will ugly URLs rank as well as more descriptive addresses?

Beyond search engine marketing considerations — think like your customers. If you are searching for content management systems and a good web host, which URL are you more likely to click upon? For example, here are two URLs at my site:

http://bergells.com/
content-management-systems/webhost-and-domain-name.html

http://bergells.com/
index.php?option=com_
content&task=view&id=17&Itemid=34&mosmsg=
Thanks+for+your+vote%21

See, if you click on each link, you’ll go to a page with the exact same content. I use a Content Management System, and of course, this means dynamically genereated pages with ugly URLs.

But it doesn’t have to be that way….

I use a URL rewrite methodology to make sure my address bar is more descriptive. Google will have an easier time figuring out what your site is about with a more descriptive URL.

And so will your customers.

And my URL re-write methodology is free, and works automatically. So where’s the downside?

No downside. There isn’t one. The most expensive URL rewrite that I’ve seen cost around $100. Most are free. (I recommend the free ones.) And did I mention that you set it up once, and it works automatically to generate good looking URLs as you continue to add content to your site?

Just do it. If you already do URL rewrite, don’t stop!

And if you don’t: don’t wait.

Deploy a URL rewrite methodology today!