How much does the URL matter?

[mud]

Does it make much differnce if your site has urls formatted like this:

[example.com...]

as opposed to:

[example.com...]

or even:

[example.com...]

[edited by: ciml at 3:29 pm (utc) on Feb. 16, 2004]
[edit reason] Examplified URLs. [/edit]

[philicious]

We implemented URL rewriting on a clients site at the start of the month. The previous URL structure was:
site.com/locations.jsp?category=1&subcat=2
This site was fully indexed by Google and received OK traffic with deep content as entry pages.

With URL rewriting we now see:
site.com/film_locations/white_sand_beaches/

In the last couple of weeks, search engine referrals have increased 10-fold.

People searching for "white sand beaches" end up on our high ranking pages... The other thing to consider, this is a film locations database, full of images and little text. We haven't really even started the main content optimisation yet!

We thought URL rewriting might make a little bit of difference (hence we implemented it), particularly from a usability point of view, but this is quite amazing from an SEO perspective (IMHO).

[viva]

How about this?

It's better for me to have 'www.example.com/town/services.htm' as for my site organization. But it seems that maybe Google prefers 'www.example.com/town-services.htm'.

Any idea? Thank you.

<edit>
- Sorry -
I've just found my post on this thread.
[webmasterworld.com...]
I didn't want it to be redundant. How can I delete my redudant post? Sorry again.
<edit>