Which URL is better for Google?

[mankgr]

Hi.

From the below,which seo-url is better:
(Let's suppose a site with videos)

1. http://www.example.com/funnyvideos/259-ball.html
or
2. http://www.example.com/funnyvideos-259-ball.html
(where 259:id of video,ball:name of video and funnyvideos:category in which the video belongs to)
?

Thanks :)

[tedster]

No difference.

[janharders]

It might, however, get significant at some point in the future, if they start to extract more informations than just keywords, e.g. categorize documents. For that, a "folder"-like resource-scheme is probably better and more reasonable (everthing in /funnyvideos/ shares the attribute of being a funny video, thus is related, while funnyvideos-* lacks this clear distinction).
It's not a matter now and it might never be, but why not play it safe and prepare for it. Also, it's simply clearer.

[LifeinAsia]

If you care about such things, TBPR usually drops 1 for every folder removed from the top level.

[nomis5]

What is the basis for your belief about the TBPR drop?

[LifeinAsia]

What is the basis for your belief about the TBPR drop?

Observation.

I should have said "sometimes" instead of "usually."

[g1smd]

Are you sure it is related the "number of slashes in the URL" and not just the "number of clicks away from root"? :)

Do make sure that your rewrite rules pass every part of the URL to your script for verification, and that any non-valid value returns either a proper 404 error in the HTTP header, or else a 301 redirect to the correct URL in the case where for your page

/funnyvideos-259-ball.html

someone links to

/funnyvideos-259-[i]do-not-watch-this-junk[/i].html

.

In fact, at this point, why not go extensionless, dropping the .html part from the URL? Only "real" files on your server, like robots.txt, stylesheets, js files, and images will therefore have an extension. This makes your rewrite rules a LOT more simple and a heck of a lot more efficient. In particular you can do away with the very time-consuming "exists as a file" checking.

Another thing here, if you are going to have category and name in the URL, do make sure that for the requested name, that the category in the URL is valid for that name. That is, if it is incorrect, either send a 404 error or send a 301 redirect to the correct URL. Failure to do so, invites infinite Duplicate Content problems.

Personally, I would give each video a unique ID and not worry about carrying category information in the URL. That data would be pulled from the database, keyed by the unique video ID number and used to populate page content and navigation.

[LifeinAsia]

Are you sure it is related the "number of slashes in the URL" and not just the "number of clicks away from root"? :)

Pretty sure. I remember some pages that were a few levels down, but linked from the site's index page. The TBPR difference was the same as the number of slashes.

As I said, it's just been from my observations, and I'm sure there are just as many (if not more) counter-examples.

[Robert Charlton]

I remember some pages that were a few levels down, but linked from the site's index page.

I've explored pages in the same situation, but on those I've checked, the TBPR shows the same as other pages linked directly from the index page.

Additionally, I could argue, depending on how the nav structure is set up (and what kind of deep links the site has), the actual PR on these pages may well be higher than pages linked only directly from the index page... but generally only by a fractional amount that you wouldn't see on the Toolbar.

It is a question of click levels, as well as how PR is split up along the way. The directory levels should have nothing to do with it, but many sites are set up so click levels correspond to directory levels, and it therefore often appears that directory levels are what matters.

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 9:44 pm (utc) on May 21, 2009]