Does search term in URL Matter?

creating search friendly urls

[RayRay]

Does it help to have the desired search phrase in a URL? For example if I sell toasters ovens with an internal sku# of 12345, is there a difference between:

www.MYSITE.com/products/Toaster_Over.html

and

www.MYSITE.com/products/12345.html

Also if it is not relevent for Google does it matter for any other SE?

Thanks!

[rfgdxm1]

It might. I'd recommend:

www.MYSITE.com/products/Toaster-Oven.html

Note the underscore is NOT seen the same way as a hyphen by Google; only the hyphen is seen as a word break. Note that worst case scenario of using URLs like the above is that this will result in no benefit. Might not help, but it can't hurt to try. ;)

[rfgdxm1]

{deleting dupe post]

[ronin]

It makes sense to create intuitive URLs whatever the search engines make of them.

Imagine a very well optimised page with the URL:

www.MYSITE.com/products/12345.html

And imagine a slightly less well optimised page with the URL:

www.MYSITE.com/products/toasteroven.html

Let's say when you type "toaster oven" as a search query you get the top URL as your third result on the first page of results and the bottom URL as your ninth result on the first page of results. (And let's say for arguments sake that the title and description displayed are not very meaningful in either case).

Which URL are you going to click on?
What, even though it's the ninth result instead of the third?

Well, I never...