Google prefers a short descriptive URL

Posted: Sun Mar 12, 2006 8:59 am

Lots of ideas floating around "up-stairs" and not enough time to entertain all of them... Wink

Worker Joined: Nov 22, 2004 Posts: 208 Location: Italy

I think i saw a post on nukecops about googleTap Reborn by ZX
announcing something about what you're looking for
I noticed he did descriptive-tap on the forums at castlecops.com and urls comes out this way:
p728911-The_Joke_of_the_Day.html#728911
You could try to ask there how things are going...

Site Admin Joined: Jun 04, 2004 Posts: 6433

Or, we could wait...

Worker Joined: Dec 23, 2005 Posts: 226 Location: UK

Quote:

Or, we could wait...

...for? drum roll

Posted: Sun Mar 12, 2006 12:51 pm

Sorry - it's a joke from another thread...

Posted: Sun Mar 12, 2006 2:37 pm

After a bit of reading it looks like a module tweak would be needed (too much for me).

I found a free portal “Drupal” http://drupal.org/ It uses descriptive url’s

castlecops and nukecops do use them, but couldn’t find any info.

There’s a lot of vBulletin talk about vBSEO’s use of them $150 Shocked

http://www.vbseo.com/

Posted: Sun Mar 12, 2006 2:53 pm

Thanks. Is there any discussion about whether it helps ranking, or is it just how to use it?

PHP-Nuke tried to do something like that with News and other content types by adding unused variables that contain categories, titles, etc. in the links. Some would say that hurts saturation...

Posted: Sun Mar 12, 2006 3:04 pm

A few people are saying when they turn off vBSEO new pages don’t get googled, when they turn back on they get googled within a few hours.

Posted: Sun Mar 12, 2006 3:14 pm

Thanks. That supports the theory that it helps saturation. I'd suggest that a Google sitemap does the same thing. Almost everyone agrees, however, that the content of the page determines ranking. Of course, if Google doesn't index a page, it's content is irrelevant...so, it's a start.

Posted: Sun Mar 12, 2006 3:18 pm

There is also talk about being punished for having duplicate url's listed, I think (not on site) and using rewrite to hide the old url's which then goes on to talk about the mobius strip.
It was suggested a worldwideweb loop would be started that could cause the end of everything if it wasn’t for the humble browser.

Posted: Sun Mar 12, 2006 3:30 pm

This looks interesting http://corz.org/serv/tricks/htaccess2.php
but my brain has had enough of reading today

Another site with “attractive” url’s http://www.realwebtalk.com/

Posted: Sun Mar 12, 2006 6:57 pm

Quote:

being punished for having duplicate url's

Makes me wonder about my listing for index.php now i'm using index.html
Google would think I have two identical sites

Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2006 12:46 am

hinksta - in your case, as you already have index.php listed you can experiment........
Having to links to the same content is not harmful per se
Where several links lead directly to the same content google should simply drop one in favour of another.
In your specific case it will drop the index.php
Now you are asking yourself why aren't you?
Well its simple really. Google has indexed both index.ph and index.html and they should BOTH have the same 'relevancy' as each other as the both link directly to exactly the same content.
However, because when anyone on your site navigates away from the index page, to get back there all links are to index.html so the index.html would then gain in increase in 'relevancy' as google should determine that particular link is used more.

Anothr way of testing this theory is to use Alexa (www.alexa.com) where within a few months you should be able to see a marked difference between the two pages.

Posted: Thu Mar 23, 2006 5:41 pm

Google has finaly decided to list some of my Bang Head

OLD pages

Posted: Thu Mar 23, 2006 8:36 pm

Great - any ideas on why?

Posted: Fri Mar 24, 2006 5:22 am

The links that have been listed are some of the html articles from my first html and xml sitemap.

A couple of days ago I reduced the links on my home page from 130 to 100.
and reduced the amount of duplicates.

Google sitemap still has the same rubish common words listed from the first sitemap upload and a low pagerank.

A week after my first sitemap I started adding keywords to my urls and more to my pages, non of these urls have been listed on google yet, but at this rate maybe in a couple of weeks.

Posted: Fri Mar 24, 2006 6:51 am

the pages listed by google also include some that are not in the sitemap. short php urls Your_Account etc

Posted: Fri Mar 24, 2006 7:03 am

I have been adding a lot of RewriteRule's for the changed urls, this has resulted in a supersized .htaccess.
Is this wise?
Is there a short way to rewrite say from article1.html to article100.html = keyword_article1.html to keyword_article100.html rather than a rewrite for each article?

Posted: Fri Mar 24, 2006 8:36 am

hinksta,

You should be using the original .htaccess rules provided with GTNG! If you notice, the numbers are not hardcoded. Wink

Posted: Fri Mar 24, 2006 9:43 am

Super Montego strikes again

Thanx

Posted: Tue Jun 27, 2006 5:24 am

Well well well, Google has after all this time listed ontheball.info

This could be a coincidence but it happened a few hours after I minimised the site (because I have less time for it and didn't get many members or hits) to just a few modules.

This is a list of modules I disabled

AvantGo
Content
Downloads
Encyclopedia
FAQ
Forums
Groups
Journal
MS_TopSites
Private_Messages
Reviews
Search
Stories_Archive
Submit_News
themes
Top
Topics
Web_Links
Your_Account
Your_Profile

Modules still running

cblocks
Feedback
FIFA_World_Cup-MM
MS_Analysis
Multiheadlines
News (no links to news)
NukeSentinel
Recommend_Us
sitemap
Spamlist
Statistics
Surveys

Posted: Tue Jun 27, 2006 5:50 am

I doubt that delisting the extra modules cause Google to list your site. But I have found that a Google sitemap improves the time for listing as well as the saturation (the number of pages indexed). Content is really important - if your description, titles, keywords match the actual content of the page (i.e. you're not playing games with the search engines), Google treats you more favorably. Make it easier for the search engine to find the right content through a sitemap makes Googlebot happy. Instead of checking every page on your site - including stuff you don't want indexed like feedback, etc. - Google can focus on the important content that helps your placement.