Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
http://example.com/foo/8383838383838383/foo_bar_cat_dog_if_then_other
to
http://example.com/8383/foo-bar-cat-dog-if-then-other
The theory here that Google will tokenize on the hyphens better. The first path entry is removed too to make the URL shorter as well.
I'm not sure if fixing the URL from 3 directories to 2 will have a boost.
Would it make sense to maybe migrate to:
http://example.com/foo-bar-cat-dog-if-then-other-8383
Instead?
The number of apparent directories in a url is not important, in my opinion. What is important is the number of clicks it takes to arrive at a url from either the Home Page or an inbound link. Click depth is the critical factor -- but on many sites click depth is mirrored by the directory structure.
So if you just do a statistical analysis of top ranking urls, it may seem skewed toward fewer directories. As I see it, this is not a cause and effect thing, just a correlation.
The move to hyphens instead of underscores may give you slight edge -- but I would hope for anything dramatic here.
And most of all, you do realize that changing all your urls means they all start from zero again, right? If you're willing to take that bump in the road, then go for it.
[edited by: tedster at 8:30 am (utc) on Sep. 18, 2006]
Totally... which is why we're not going to do that ;)
I'm going to push a release and hard code some time in the future, say a week, when all new posts will switch over to the new URL format.
Apparently, if you don't do that, you don't go to zero --- you go to "supplemental hell".
The old urls do not (ever?) get removed on google's end no matter what anybody has tried.
Oh, and don't forget to 301 http://example.com to http://www.example.com
or vice versa dependeng on which is your preferred domain.
I didn't do those things during url restructure and now I am woe.
