Googlebot / QueryString / ASP

[Raymond]

Many of you have recommended to keep the querystring short. Exactly how short is "short"? I have this page that just wouldn't work without having at least 3 parameters because of various conditions and arguements for a database connection. I am not sure if 3 are already considered too many.

Thanks in advance!

[jeremy goodrich]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld.

Honestly, the best thing I can recommend is to try the site search [searchengineworld.com], or simple check out this previous discussion [webmasterworld.com].

That seems to cover most of the basics. Cheers!

[jamesa]

One way to shorten a query string is to combine the various parameters and parse it out in the code.

Take query strings like:

page.blah?key1=value1&key2=value2&key3=value3

and change it to:

page.blah?newkey=value1-value2-value3

or better yet, do a mod rewrite (IIS must have an equivalent) to get:

page-value1-value2-value3.htm

or

page/value1-value2-value3.htm

<added>Jeremy types faster :)</added>

[OZZY2662]

The maximum number of querystring parameters in a URL that gets indexed by google is 2.

[Raymond]

Thank you for all the replies!

According to some of the previous post, 15 is the magic number for querystring. Can someone verify this? Also, does googlebot have a preference for .html files rather than .asp or .php?