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Optimizing a Dynamic Site

Can I have more than 3 querystring parameters?

         

blastboy88

4:24 pm on Nov 18, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I've been doing some research on optimizing dynamic sites, and most of the information I've found is a little dated (12-24 months old).

Could anyone shed some light on current best practices for optimizing a dynamic site? In particular, how many querystring parameters is too many? 3? 4? 5? I've heard that search engines are capable of handling at least two parameters, but I'm not sure if people have found this to be true or not.

As well, I've read a lot about making dynamic pages more indexable (Apache mod_rewrite, IIS Rewrite, CGI/Perl Path_Info and Script_Name, etc.) by stripping out querystring parameters like #?&$%. Has this worked for anyone? Are there any problems associated with this process?

JonR28

6:38 pm on Nov 18, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I use coldfusion and I strip out the parameters to make my widget product pages have simple URLs. You can see an example in my profile of the site in action. You can pass as many parameters as you want and then get the values from the string. It's easy to do with Cold Fusion and although I've not tried it a quick search on WW will reveal how other people have done it with Apache ModRewrite.

Craig_F

6:45 pm on Nov 18, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I'd worry about going beyond 1 parameter. You'll find a bunch of different workarounds for each technology that can ork, but mod_rewrite is probably the most widely used. And yes, it works very well.