Tell me more ×
Webmasters Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for pro webmasters. It's 100% free, no registration required.
up vote 3 down vote favorite

Can Google index rewriten URLs? I mean, if I have the link

<a href="http://mydomain.com/document">Grab the document!</a>

and if I instruct Apache to rewrite http://mydomain.com/document as http://mydomain.com/document.pdf or http://mydomain.com/download.php?file=document.pdf, will Google still be able to index the contents of the resulting PDF file?

share|improve this question

1 Answer

up vote 5 down vote

Google sees the URL you publish. The rewrite happens in the background and is invisible to them. So as long as your URL is valid and the content you want can be reached with it Google will index it just fine.

share|improve this answer
Thank you very much. Will people, in this case, still be able to use the "filetype:pdf" switch to search for this particular document? – DotNetStudent Mar 11 '12 at 18:10
2  
Yes since that URL will ultimately return a PDF. – John Conde♦ Mar 11 '12 at 18:12

Your Answer

 
discard

By posting your answer, you agree to the privacy policy and terms of service.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.