Keywords in URL

Directories vs. "static" HTML?

[barns101]

I have recently used mod_rewrite to structure my URLs logically and appear to be static directories rather than index.php?id=xx. I run a restaurants directory and this also allowed me to use the location and restaurant name in the URL, which I though would be advantageous, SEO-wise.

Google has indexed the new URLs quickly, as I used a 301 redirect. A search for 'restaurant name restaurant my city' (no quotes) shows me near the top but the SERPS show some strange results in relation to the highlighted search terms.

My URL for that restaurant (under the link and description) appears as follows (the bold is how Google has highlighted the SERPS):

www.example.com/restaurants/Area/Name-Of-Restaurant/

Note that the name of the restaurant is not highlighted even though it is part of the search terms. However, the result above mine shows highlighted as follows:

www.example.com/areaofmycountry/greedycow/food/cafes/nameofrestaurant.shtml

So the name of the restaurant gets highlighted for that result but not for mine. Their directory structure is longer than mine, so I guess that's not the problem.

Does Google prefer pages (e.g. abc.htm) rather than directories (e.g. /abc/)? I thought that hyphens in URLs were OK when used sparingly? I have searched the net and WW for an answer but I haven't found anything similar.

[treeline]

In your examples, look carefully at the cApitAlizAtion in all cases. That could explain the mystery right there.

Then try repeating the searches......

[barns101]

Hi treeline, thanks for replying. I tried the search both in all lowercase (name of restaurant) and then in title case (Name Of Restaurant) and both searches returned exactly the same result and keyword highlighting.

[Right Reading]

It looks to me like it is stopping at the first search term ("restaurant") and highlighting that word. If so, then the hyphenation is not the issue.

[treeline]

OK, so I tried several searches for local restaurants structured similarly, out of curiosity.

Then I carefully reread your question.

I think directories are always better than pages, and leave you with a lot more flexibility for the future. As for hyphens, I'd say they're not hurting you if you're already near the top.

Looking at other search results, the pattern of what gets highlighted is a little confusing. Using caps (or not) in my search doesn't seem to change it, but in some cases the name of the restaurant gets highlighted, and in some it doesn't. So I look at a bunch of restaurants, and a pattern slowly emerges.

Lower case words in the url seem to get highlighted, and upper case words don't. Take a look at your examples and see if it looks the same. Now that I've spotted it, it seems to be a very strong pattern. Not the case for description or title, just url.

I'm not sure it's worth adjusting anything because of this.

[montefin]

Hmmmmmmmm...hyphens, underlines, runtogetherwords for names of restaurants.

3 name restaurant (input Name1 Name2 Name3) appears in Google 1st page SERPs in this order:

name1name2.htm ....cache date May 9, 2006
yada-yada-yada-name1_name2_name3.html ....cache date May 12, 2006
name1_name2_name3.html ....cache date Apr 28, 2006

2 name restaurant (input Name1 Name2) appears in Google 1st page SERPs in this order:

name1name2.com ....cache date May 11, 2006
name1name2.com/yada/name1name2.htm ....cache date May 11, 2006
name1name2/ ....cache date May 15, 2006
name1-name2-chefname1st-chefname2nd.html ....cache date May 13, 2006
The_Name1_Name2.htm ....cache date April 30, 2006

Both restaurants fairly unique; both famous in their own right for different reasons; one now gone.

[barns101]

Looking at other search results, the pattern of what gets highlighted is a little confusing. Using caps (or not) in my search doesn't seem to change it, but in some cases the name of the restaurant gets highlighted, and in some it doesn't. So I look at a bunch of restaurants, and a pattern slowly emerges.

Lower case words in the url seem to get highlighted, and upper case words don't. Take a look at your examples and see if it looks the same. Now that I've spotted it, it seems to be a very strong pattern. Not the case for description or title, just url.

That's exactly what I have found. So it looks like only lowercase keywords in the URL get highlighted. I guess this could affect clickthroughs, as it could attract the user's attention.

If I were to change URLs from the format www.example.com/Name-Of-Restaurant/ to www.example.com/name-of-restaurant/, would Google see that as two pages with duplicate content, as my mod_rewrite is not case-sensitive and would serve the page when either URL is called?

And lastly, does highlighting affect SERPS ranking?

[treeline]

I don't think this would make much of a difference to anyone searching. The url is the 3rd and smallest item showing. Capitalized words get highlighted in both the Title and Description, so by the time people (the limited # who bother) look at the url, I think they're more interested in the url of the website than if the name of the restaurant is there. That is, does the url look like the official restaurant's page, a directory, yellow pages, etc.

If you're doing decently in the SERPs, I wouldn't risk changing anything over this. Just can't see how there's anything to gain. Energy would be better spent improving descriptions or titles to ones that beg to be clicked.

Seems very unlikely that SERP order is influenced by highlighting. Probably just a mindless script that highlights anything on the page (after it's generated) meeting the criteria.

[g1smd]

The bolding is a process that is applied to the keywords at the time the results are sent to the browser, not something connected with how the results are indexed and sorted.

One other result for you. For a site:domain.com inurl:keyword search, I saw the keyword also highlighted in bold whenever it appeared in the snippet as well as wherever it appeared in the (green) URL in the results.

[barns101]

OK I guess I'll leave it as it is. Thanks for your help and advice. :)

[barns101]

As an update to this, I have changed another website to this format of URL, but all lowercase, and all keywords in the URL are now highlighted in Google SERPs. So it appears that keywords in directories and pages will be highlighted but only if they are in lowercase. I have no idea if it affects ranking though.

[ConnieS]

Could that possibly be because most people search in all lower case?

[kevsh]

>>
Could that possibly be because most people search in all lower case?
>>

Another explanation could be that Google wants to prevent people from putting file names in ALL CAPS just to stand out better in the SERPs?