Please, explain me

[pierrebenoit]

Hi,

I read here some posts about SE friendly url but I still have some questions. Every sample I saw was with 2 parameters like
product.php?id1=something&id2=otherthing

In one of my site, I have some url like product.php?id=something
For me, this url is OK but I want to know if Google can index this kind of url.

Do you thing I really need to use .htaccess/mod-rewrite in order to have links like product.php/id/something

Thanks

[freekrai]

at the least, you need to change the id= to something other than id
possibly change it to product.php?prod=something or else switch to the mod_rewrite stuff.

[r2d2]

Google doesnt like querystrings with 'id' in because they could be sessionids which could put the bot in a loop.

I would recommend reading a good tutorial to find out how to create SE friendly URLs, eg http://www.websitepublisher.net/article/search_engine_friendly_urls/

[incka]

change id= to item=

use .htaccess rather than mod_rewrite

[Kings]

change id= to item=

use .htaccess rather than mod_rewrite.htaccess = mod_rewrite ;)

[freekrai]

.htaccess = mod_rewrite ;)
It doesn't necessarily mean mod_rewrite ;)
.htaccess could be used with forcetype instead :D

[incka]

That's what I meant by .htaccess - forcetype. That is what I use.

[freekrai]

That's what I meant by .htaccess - forcetype. That is what I use.
That's what I figured you meant, was why I mentioned the difference.

[incka]

I knew, you had got it right, it was the other guy I was saying that too.

[Emancipator]

You sure google gets hung up on ids? It reads mine just fine. All 800+ pages of them, spiders the content dandy.

[Chris]

They used to, or they sometimes still do. In anycase it is a very easy change and so its better to be safe than sorry.

[Emancipator]

Ive never tried to do it before, is there a 4second explanation for it? I will give it a try no my site.

[r2d2]

http://www.websitepublisher.net/article/search_engine_friendly_urls/

Not quite 4 seconds, but should sort you out :)

[incka]

I tried to change it on a script I am using but it didn't work. The files didn't understand the new URLs and I couldn't figure out why... Well it's only a small part of my new site...

[Emancipator]

http://www.websitepublisher.net/article/search_engine_friendly_urls/

Not quite 4 seconds, but should sort you out :)

Thanks R2 I am going to check it out. I am a googleaholic and done well bby it, but just never played with the whole replacement of vars since last i checked google has no problem with them... although 2years ago it did.

Now with htat said I am not talking session ids, those are a ***** :P

[intelliot]

You sure google gets hung up on ids?
You're right, it does not anymore.

however, there are other SE's out there - why take the chance if you don't have to.

[pierrebenoit]

Thanks for your help.

I changed all id= to item= in the script. I would like to use .htaccess but need help because the variable is a combinaison of numbers and letters.

Some url I want to rewrite:
http://personal-advisor.cyber-boutik.com/index.php?item=411be29c76efe
http://personal-advisor.cyber-boutik.com/index.php?item=4117e43021452

I want something like:
http://personal-advisor.cyber-boutik.com/index.php/item/411be29c76efe
http://personal-advisor.cyber-boutik.com/index.php/item/4117e43021452

But not really sure if I need that to get indexed by search engine

So I wrote this in .htaccess:
================================================== ==
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^item/([A-Za-z]+)$ index.php?item=$1
================================================== ==

Any advice?

[intelliot]

Since you have index.php in the URLs you want, there is no need to bother with .htaccess at all. Your PHP script just needs to be modified, and I believe there is an article on websitepublisher that can help.

If you wish to remove the .php, look into using ForceType application/x-httpd-php