What is better in the URL?

?PageId=170 or ?widgets

[Voyteck]

Hello

What do you think is better. Let's say I have a link to the page about Widgets. Domain name is not connected with the search term. Is it better to have the url of my CMS system to point to ...../?PageId=170 or to ......./?Widgets
The word Widgets would be in the title of the destination page and in the name of the link would be <a href=....>Widgets</a>

The search term is widgets of course.

Thank you in advance.

Voyteck

[bird]

Try to get by without any "?", "&", and "=" in the URL.

www.example.com/widgets/
www.example.com/widgets.html

On apache, this can easily be done with mod_rewrite, assuming your CMS is capable to use simplified links (if it isn't, then it's probably lacking in other aspects as well).

[lty83]

is it possible to get IIS to not show the? or &? I'm using asp, would like to have good my dynamic pages indexed because even though they are dynamic the content will remain for a while.

[jweighell]

Yes it is possible, and I've done it on my server. It will involve installing a component on the webserver - you may need to talk nicely to your web hosting company.

There are a few different components around. The one I've used is [isapirewrite.com...]

Since doing this, I've had a load more of my dynamic pages indexed, and I seem to get a better PR ranking on the pages I had indexed before.

[lty83]

I have dedicated server :-)

Thanks for info, will be immensly helpful!

[lty83]

There are a few different components around. The one I've used is [isapirewrite.com...]

Was it hard to implement? Did you have to make many changes to the site code at all?

[Voyteck]

First of all the responses were helpfull but still my concern is what is better.

I cannot make any changes to the server, so the only thing I can do is to set the name of the file.

What are your opinions?

Voyteck

[jweighell]

From the options you describe, having the keyword in the querystring is always better.