Google PHP Death

Which characters should be avoided in PHP URL's

[Anon27]

I have a site which I am currently working on in PHP and I wish to avoid Google Death.
Which characters should be avioded in the URL strings?

[kosmodrom]

From my experience and from what i learned here: the #1 string you should never use is the 'id='. Googlebots won't crawl urls that include 'id=' as google might consider them as session ids.

[genericusername]

I'm not sure that your contention concerning the id in the URL is correct:

[google.com...]

[doc_z]

If you avoid session id's and too much variables, you are on the safe side.

[mcavic]

I'm not sure that your contention concerning the id in the URL is correct:

Ah, good find. Someone else said that ID= would work, but not id=.

I'd keep the variable names and contents as short as possible. Based on another thread, you can use 1 or 2, but not 3 variables.

[mikemcs]

I can confirm that google did not index any pages on my site with 2 or more variables in the URL but this may depend on your PR. I belive that some Yahoo links with several variables do get indexed?

[mcavic]

I've had 2-variable pages indexed for some time, on a PR3/4 site.

[mikemcs]

I can confirm that google did not index any pages on my site with 2 or more variables in the URL but this may depend on your PR. I belive that some Yahoo links with several variables do get indexed?

my mistake I meant to say 3 variables or more and here is a Yahoo 3 variable example:

[google.com...]

[daamsie]

Ah, good find. Someone else said that ID= would work, but not id=.

My site's in Coldfusion, so perhaps the same rules don't apply, but I do have about ten pages with an id= that are indexed just fine.

Mind you, I am considering changing that just to be on the safe side.