Links with variables

Are links with variables OK?

[markdidj]

I am creating an animated drumming tutorials page.
The page lets viewers create their own drum rhythms, but until recently they had no way to send or share them. I have now created a button that creates a link with the rhythm in the location, so when someone goes to the site throught a link with a rhythm in it sets that rhythm as the first preset to be played.

A link would end up looking something like this..
www.mysite.co.uk/rhythms.html#&rhythm=30313130

Now what I'd like to know is would this be OK to let other webmasters link to my site? They could demonstrate a rhythm that is on their website through the link.

Does Google mind links like this?

[Winooski]

My understanding is that Google doesn't have a problem with one or two parameters in the URL.

Per this late April 2003 thread re Google being better at spidering dynamic sites [webmasterworld.com], GoogleGuy says, "In general, it's still a good idea to keep the number of parameters short", but he doesn't come out and state explicitly how many parameters is too many. (That same thread contains the "instant classic" comment from GG in reference to an example address containing a slew of parameters, "that url looks like the punctuation monster barfed on your urls".)

I'm sure other WebmasterWorld members with more direct experience with parameter spidering will chime in.

(I'm no expert, but wouldn't the parameter in your example be like this...

www.mysite.co.uk/rhythms.html?rhythm=30313130

...instead of this...

www.mysite.co.uk/rhythms.html#&rhythm=30313130?)

[markdidj]

Thanks.

I'm no expert either, as you can see.......

I'm changing it now...

Thanks again.

[markdidj]

Is there a problem with using the #&rhythm=
I works faster and better for my needs.

[markdidj]

the?var= reloads the page when the link is clicked
but #&var= just adds the variable to the location without reloading the page. Are they both OK to use, more to the point, OK with Google. Looks like I may be re-indexed after a month ban and I don't want to put anything dangerous into my site that may ruin it.

[Winooski]

OK, I think I'm following you now. My understanding is that the "rhythms.html" page has some script which executes a unique file based on the "rhythm" parameter, and it needs to have the pound sign, "#", in the URL in order to work. Is that correct?

I think you'll be fine, i.e., Google will follow the link, spider "rhythms.html", and index it, assigning the page a PageRank value. However, I think Google will essentially ignore everything after the "#".

The reasoning is that "#" is used for fragment identifiers [w3.org], usually bookmarks. (A bookmark is the NAME attribute of an A tag, commonly used to mark a specific location on a page for navigation there via hyperlink)

In the December 2002 thread, "Does Google follow links to page bookmarks" [webmasterworld.com], Mohamed_E writes:

My guess is that when google sees www.domain.com/page.html#bookmark it truncates it to www.domain.com/page.html.

My reasoning is that you are pointing to a page (which google is interested in) and are specifying a location within that page (that google does not care about). So it keeps the page and ignores the location.

I should emphasize that I don't have personal experience with this, just what I've uncovered using the handy "site search" tool.