Rewrite URLs and Yahoo Ranks

Will Rewriting URLs Affect my Yahoo Ranking?

[digicam]

Hi, I am thinking about setting up a URL rewriter to rewrite pages from custom.aspx?id=xx to pagetitle.htm

Will this affect Yahoo in any way - will it reindex the pages as new pages or will it have a hissy fit?

any thoughts

cheers

[Jimville]

Three years ago, I installed a rewrite filter. Till recently, they indexed both sets of urls. Since the pages involved weren't ranked, I assume Y gave each page a penalty for dupe content instead of recognizing them as old urls that shouldn't be indexed. It's really hard to know for sure since Y only carries on one-way converstions other than auto responses. So, in an effort to do Yahoo's job for them, I then put 301s on each page. Now, the index is much better, but the pages are still not ranked. The cached page still displays the old urls in the y description: "Below is a cache of...". My advice is to be careful. BTW, Google and the new MSN never had any of these problems. They understood the rewrite immediately and each page is ranked.

[digicam]

I should also ask can Yahoo index a page in the form:-

custom.aspx?id=12 properly

[digicam]

answered my own question if anyone else wants to know - course it can.

[Rollo]

You should be fine as long as you make sure that they a permanent redirects. If the current pages already rank in Yahoo, you'll probably lose all your rankings for a good long time, but I think a tidy URL that is tidy and descriptive is worth it in the long run.