Mod Re-Write

[PumpkinHead]

Hi all,

My site uses php and uses variables from the url to navigate.

E.g

www.mydomain.com/?section=widgets&size=big&colour=blue

MSN crawls through my site with no problems, but Google and Yahoo only seem to index a few pages at the lowest level (&colour=blue) so I'm thinking about changing my site to:

www.mydomain.com/widgets/big/blue/

- Is this a mod rewrite? Any good introductions to this?
- Will I 'really' see a difference in spidering/indexing? (Providing I have good inbound links)
- My site has been live for around 5 months, is it a bad idea to change now? (I'm not currently indexed in Google/Yahoo in the first #*$!xxx thousand pages).

[hannamyluv]

Yes, that would be a mod_rewrite. The best thing to learn when doing a mod_rewrite is to get a really firm grasp on regular expressions. This is very helpful. The next is to pop on over to apache server forum on WW and do some back reading.

I can't really say how much of an effect it will have. Some people get huge boosts, others see only a little boost, but I have not talked to a single person that did not benifit from a mod_rewite. Most spiders can handle 2 or 3 parameters in a query string but they do handle a clean url better.

[PumpkinHead]

Thanks for the info :)

Why exactly do search engines stuggle when you have more than one/two variables in the url? Surely it can't be that difficult to code for?

[g1smd]

They struggle because there can be an almost infinite number of values for each parameter, and each page can be accessed multiple ways by changing the combination (order of the parameters).

Here is a single page that has 24 ways (duplicate pages) to access it:

www.shirts.com/product.php?&size=18&colour=blue&logo=46&manu=15
www.shirts.com/product.php?&size=18&colour=blue&manu=15&logo=46
www.shirts.com/product.php?&size=18&logo=46&colour=blue&manu=15
www.shirts.com/product.php?&size=18&logo=46&manu=15&colour=blue
www.shirts.com/product.php?&size=18&manu=15&colour=blue&logo=46
www.shirts.com/product.php?&size=18&manu=15&logo=46&colour=blue
www.shirts.com/product.php?&colour=blue&size=18&logo=46&manu=15
www.shirts.com/product.php?&colour=blue&size=18&manu=15&logo=46
www.shirts.com/product.php?&colour=blue&logo=46&size=18&manu=15
www.shirts.com/product.php?&colour=blue&logo=46&manu=15&size=18
www.shirts.com/product.php?&colour=blue&manu=15&size=18&logo=46
www.shirts.com/product.php?&colour=blue&manu=15&logo=46&size=18
www.shirts.com/product.php?&logo=46&size=18&colour=blue&manu=15
www.shirts.com/product.php?&logo=46&size=18&manu=15&colour=blue
www.shirts.com/product.php?&logo=46&colour=blue&size=18&manu=15
www.shirts.com/product.php?&logo=46&colour=blue&manu=15&size=18
www.shirts.com/product.php?&logo=46&manu=15&size=18&colour=blue
www.shirts.com/product.php?&logo=46&manu=15&colour=blue&size=18
www.shirts.com/product.php?&manu=15&size=18&colour=blue&logo=46
www.shirts.com/product.php?&manu=15&size=18&logo=46&colour=blue
www.shirts.com/product.php?&manu=15&colour=blue&size=18&logo=46
www.shirts.com/product.php?&manu=15&colour=blue&logo=46&size=18
www.shirts.com/product.php?&manu=15&logo=46&size=18&colour=blue
www.shirts.com/product.php?&manu=15&logo=46&colour=blue&size=18