Whats the best URL structure for a e-commerce store?

What format should use when changing 'product.asp?ID=15' to a SE friendly U

[nickc001]

Hi,

What are good SE friendly URL structures for online shops?

I am URL rewriting my product pages, i.e. ViewProduct.asp?ID=15 will become something like domain.com/categoryname/productID/productName.asp

What url structure do people use here and is there a danger of over optimising a URL?

i.e. is domain.com/productID/productName.asp a good choice

or is domain.com/productID-productName.asp better as it closer to the root of the domain

I need the product ID somewhere in the URL so that the URL rewriter can identify which product to display

thanks,

Nick

[akmac]

I use:

mydomain.com/fancy-blue-widgets-110956.html

Be careful using a category name in your url if you have products that appear in multiple categories, you don't want multiple urls leading to the same page.

[nickc001]

thanks akmac,

see what you mean about the category, think will omit it as don't want to trigger any duplicate content filters.

Thinking about it there must also be some kind of validation in the page as otherwise a competitor could create links to the same product id but with a different name,

i.e.

/blue-widget-177.asp

could also be linked to as /large-widget-177.asp

If using a regular expression to find the product ID then both these pages would deliver the same content, which would be seen as duplicate content.

This means that a check on the product name must be performed and if a match isn't found with the name in the URL then a 404 response should be thrown?