Dashes or Slashes? What is better?

[skuba]

Is there a difference if using more slashes or dashes when rewriting URLs to make them more SE friendly?

We are thinking about balancing that. We would separate parameters with slashes and use dashes to cover spaces.

EXAMPLE:

www.mysite.com/list/departmentxyz/categoryxyz/1234-1234/xyx/the-name-of-my-widget.htm

Is it ok to have many slashes?

I appreciate your help.

Thanks

[cyanweb]

Most search engines have a limit to how many bytes of a url length they will index... so don't make em too long just to get URL ranking... you might just lose your whole page to the pit...

[CygnusX1]

Personally I don't like to have my pages any more then 4 pages deep and that gives me more room to play with the keywords in my URL.

[pageoneresults]

Is it ok to have many slashes?

The goal when rewriting URIs is to make the path as short as possible. Each slash represents a directory level to the spider. The more slashes present, the deeper the content looks. It will take a few crawls before most spiders will go beyond the third, fourth and fifth directory levels.

Note: The crawl depth is all relative to your internal linking structure.

You should do whatever you can to eliminate variables in the URI path. If you can hide some of those variables, that will help shorten the URI.

[cyanweb]

http*//sitelevel1.com/level2/level3/endfile.htm

From experience a site structured like above took 4 months for endfile.htm to show up on Google...

Though that was probably because the only links to it were on level3

If one linked to endfile.htm from level1, say with a sitemap, would it index quicker?

I would think so... but anyone know for sure?

[edited by: pageoneresults at 5:25 pm (utc) on Feb. 20, 2004]
[edit reason] Delinked Example [/edit]

[pageoneresults]

If one linked to endfile.htm from level1, say with a sitemap, would it index quicker?

My experience with this says yes, it will get indexed quicker and also obtain a higher PR.

I've also found that using a Featured Products menu (with rotating products) on level 1 pages is a great tool at getting deep content indexed. ;)

[skuba]

The thing is that the site is done in ASP so it works with queries on the URL. There is no way we can remove all the parameters from the URL or the site won't work.

So, you guys are saying, instead of using slashes I should use slashes on mu URL?

So they look like this instead

http*//sitelevel1.com/level2-level3-endfile.htm

[edited by: pageoneresults at 5:25 pm (utc) on Feb. 20, 2004]
[edit reason] Delinked Example [/edit]

[skuba]

This is the actual URL when you get to a product page.

http*//www.mydomain.com/detail.htm?stylepkey=11994&style_id=365%20MAVCE1&dept_id=4&deptName=Specials&sub_id=113&subName=&detailName=03%20[snip]%20[snip]%20[snip]%20[snip]%20[snip]

You see? There are many parameters and we can't remove them, or it would cost a lot to make the company that programmed to change the way the site works.

So, I was thinking about separating parameters with slashes. But acording to what you said, would be better with dashes.

Any ideas? How would you do it?
Thanks A LOT!

[edited by: pageoneresults at 5:23 pm (utc) on Feb. 20, 2004]
[edit reason] Delinked Example [/edit]

[pageoneresults]

How would you do it?

Personally I would change the structure of the cart/programming. That is an absolute mess that you have up there and will require someone with in depth experience in URI rewriting to achieve the desired results.

You've got 6 ampersands and 3 ids in that URI, that is pretty much the Kiss of Death.

The other factor to take into consideration is the user friendliness of the URI. Those long URI paths are not user friendly, even if they are rewritten.

[skuba]

Yes, that's why we are changing. The rewrite is not so difficult and we won't have the _id on the URLs anymore.
The ampercents won't be there when we do the rewrite.
My question is, should I go with ONLY dashes or use a couple slashes in the URL too?

[skuba]

The company charged us $100/hour, so we're only doing the rewrite. No way we can change the logic of the whole site.

[bumpaw]

I was just about to start using hyphens instead of underscore in files and directories until this came up. I sent an email link to a file for some one to work on at home. It was www.mydomain/abc-play.zip. When they clicked on the link Outlook loaded it as www.mydomain/abc_play.zip. Am I missing something here?

[skuba]

bumpaw, you are off topic here.

[bumpaw]

Is there a difference if using more slashes or dashes when rewriting URLs to make them more SE friendly?

http*//sitelevel1.com/level2-level3-endfile.htm

Are you sure? Are we not talking about the URL and SEP? It was your use of hyphens above that inspired my question, and I was going to that because this forum had suggested that it was better for SEP. Sorry if I was off topic.

[skuba]

Sorry, I said you were off topic cause you asked about a link you sent on an email. Didn't sound lik eyou were talking about SEO.