The same old? question...

Does google consider the? to be the end of the pages url or not?

[tenerifejim]

Ok, I know this has been asked before, probably thousands of times. But I really want a definitive answer.

Does google consider:
www.widget.com/index.html?product=1
to be a different page to:
www.widget.com/index.html?product=2

or not?

I always thought it did. In the serps they are distinct results. However, for the toolbar PR (I know, I know, this isn't the best guide in the world), if you add, for example, a new product and therefore have url:

www.widget.com/index.html?product=3

The toolbar instantly assigns this PR, way before google has spidered it.

Does this mean that google spiders www.widget.com/index.html as a page first, and anything appended after as a different page? And does the product=3 page receive the PR of the base url page initially?

Does anyone understand what I am blabbering on about?

[WebGuerrilla]

All it means is that the toolbar makes an educated guess about the PR for a page that has not been spidered. That guess is based on the depth of the page in relation to other pages that have PR.

But page depth doesn't have anything to do with real PR calculation, so there is no guarantee that the page will end up with the same PR it shows now.

[wanderingmind]

regarding your original question - whether google considers them separate pages - YES. definitely.

[tenerifejim]

Thanks guys, just wanted to understand what the TB was up to.