URL Rewriting

[digicam]

Hi, I am thinking about setting up a URL rewriter to rewrite pages from custom.aspx?id=xx to pagetitle.htm

Will this affect how SEs index my pages in any way - will they reindex the pages properly as new pages or will they mess up the indexing?

any thoughts

cheers

[BradleyT]

We do rewriting like this:

Rewritten url = /shop/categoryname/CATEGORYID/item/ITEMID/itemname.aspx

Sample = /shop/bluewidgets/45/item/3/superbluewidget.aspx

This gets processed by viewItem.aspx?itemID=3&categoryID=45.

It's extremely easy using scott mitchell's rewrite DLL that can be found on MSDN. Just put in a regular expression in your web.config.

[FalseDawn]

If the non-rewritten pages are already indexed, then there is a chance that you will get flagged for "duplicate pages" - don't know exactly how that'll work though. Just make sure you have an updated sitemap with the rewritten URLs, and hopefully the originals will get dropped from the indexes in due course.

Also, if you have high page rank for any particularly important pages, I would advise you seek out expert advice so as not to risk losing this.

[mikeb555]

The best way to preserve rank in the engines is with a http 301.