A URL, or Uniform Resource Locator, is an address for a file or resource that specifies where that resource is, and how to go about retrieving it.
69
votes
10answers
2k views
URLs: Should I use hyphens or underscores?
Which is better for search engines?
example.com/my_cool_page.html or example.com/my-cool-page.html
51
votes
8answers
2k views
Should I include “www” in my canonical URLs? What are the pros and cons?
What are the pros and cons of having http://www.example.com/ vs http://example.com/?
For example a problem I'm aware of is that if I use a domain without www I can't set a cookie for the current ...
27
votes
7answers
3k views
How should I structure my urls for both SEO and localization?
When I set up a site in multiple languages, how should I set up my urls for search engines and usability?
Let's say my site is www.example.com, and I'm translating into French and Spanish. What is ...
21
votes
5answers
510 views
Why is it preferable to use paths with slashes instead of query-string variables in a web page URL?
Why is it preferable to use paths with slashes instead of query-string variables in a web page URL?
17
votes
3answers
1k views
What does WWW do?
To be clear: I am not asking whether or not I should use www in my url, or what the pros and cons are, that topic is well covered. I also wasn't sure if this was a Stack Overflow, Server Fault, or ...
16
votes
7answers
3k views
Should I use a file extension or not?
I've always wondered about this and never found a good solution.
But this question reminded me of it.
When I have a URL on my website it can be displayed and accessed any of the following ways:
...
15
votes
5answers
363 views
Are there any technical issues with having an 'internationalized' domain name?
In my language there are numerous characters that are not allowed in the standard domain name. However, most of these can be easily replaced with safe equivalents (mostly dropping accents í becomes i ...
11
votes
2answers
8k views
What does the double slash mean in URLs?
What does the double slash mean ? (I'm not referring to the beginning right after http:).
For example:
http://www.imywebsite.gov/sectionA/sectionB//section/page/
11
votes
3answers
705 views
Why extensions are hidden in URL?
I know HTML and CSS like a mid level still not a pro. Many times I see in URL extensions are hidden (e.g. .html, .php) but everybody is not doing this.
Why do they do that? Is it for security, or for ...
10
votes
1answer
503 views
How to handle canonical url changes like Stack Overflow
Stack Overflow sites all have pretty urls which include the question title. In the HTML it also have canonical url for that page.
I just found out that when I change the question title, the url is ...
9
votes
4answers
541 views
What is good URI design?
How should a good URI be designed? What are the factors to consider? What are the pros and cons of the variants?
Factors that makes up a good URI
Stability over time
Short
Give the user an idea ...
9
votes
2answers
1k views
Can I use asterisks in URLs?
Are there any reasons I shouldn't use an asterisk (*) in a URL?
Background:
With asterisks, I could provide these nice and user friendly (or what do you think??) URLs:
...
9
votes
2answers
461 views
Why is there are tilde (~) sign in most university URLs
My university provides a web URL and some hosting space and the URL is like http://homepages.iitb.ac.in/~pritampebam.
Almost all universities I've come across seem to use this structure where there ...
9
votes
3answers
644 views
What is the best stucture of SEO friendly URL?
I'm working for a website to convert the website URL to an SEO friendly URL. I plan to use this:
mysite.com/category-name/pageid-123-page-name
I looked at some similarly categorized, highly ranked ...
9
votes
2answers
279 views
Where does the URL parameter “?chocaid=397” come from?
In Google Webmaster Tools, I noticed that my front page was indexed two times:
example.com/
example.com/?chocaid=397
I know that I could fix this with the use of link type canonical, but I wonder: ...
8
votes
1answer
546 views
Is trailing slash automagically added on click of home page URL in browser?
I am asking this because whenever I mouseover a link to a home page (e.g. http://www.example.com), I notice that a trailing slash is always added (as observed on the status bar of the browser) whether ...
8
votes
4answers
404 views
What is the difference between URL's with and without trailing slash
Should we always add the final / or avoid it ?
Example
/url-without-trailing-slash
/url-with-a-trailing-slash/
Does it make a difference?
8
votes
3answers
523 views
why does stackoverflow question urls have the question id before seo friendly 'question'
Take for example this random question Tool or plugin required to show out in which html files a given css selectors is used, notice that the relevant part is /questions/16999.
Now, it being possible ...
8
votes
6answers
1k views
Poor Man's Clean URLs vs. Mod_Rewrite
At the company where I work, we're getting ready to design a new web site, and there's some disagreement about how to do clean URLs. Over the past year we've been making small improvements to our ...
8
votes
2answers
170 views
what would happen to my domains if my domain provider company bankrupted
I am thinking to transfer all my domains to one registerer so that the control will be easy.
But I am a little bit worried about the following question;
what would happen to my domains if my domain ...
8
votes
2answers
665 views
URL paths and their effect on SEO
We are developing a website where there will be two distinct types of content: galleries and photos.
It makes little sense to use URL paths like /gallery/photo as some photos can appear in more than ...
8
votes
1answer
445 views
Multi Language URLs
I'm building an online store that will be supported in 3 languages: English, Traditional Chinese, and Simplified Chinese.
My question is whether or not it is a good idea to make language specific ...
7
votes
6answers
428 views
Subdomains or folders?
I'm working on a services type web application and I have to choose how to set up the URLs for the customers. Which solution is better, as a subdomain (e.g.: client.myservice.com) or as a folder ...
7
votes
4answers
176 views
Which of these 3 URL-Rewritings are better seo friendly URLs?
Imagine my current flat-file non-cms website with an URL like http://website.com/en/tomato
This is of course very unsexy and could be anything really from tomato soup, tomato the music band, tomato ...
7
votes
2answers
2k views
What is difference between URI and URL
I have read these pages http://www.w3.org/TR/uri-clarification/http://www.damnhandy.com/2007/11/19/uri-vs-url-whats-the-difference/
I know basic about URL,URN,URI! and little on their difference! but ...
7
votes
3answers
192 views
SEO and Changeable-But-Optional URL's
Is there any sort of downside for a URL being changeable?
Take any stack exchange question for example. The URL looks something like this:
...
7
votes
2answers
251 views
Are images with non-standard extensions (such as “.ashx”, instead of “.png” or “.jpg”) bad for SEO?
Certain CMS' running on IIS like Sitecore do not give image files appropriate file formats like .png or .jpg by default, but instead link to images as:
<img src="/media/Some Folder/EX-IMG.ashx" ...
7
votes
3answers
407 views
Squeezing all the SEO out of a URL as possible
I am working on an ecommerce site, I told our SEO consultant that I plan to make the URL scheme: /products/<id>/<name>. This is similar to Stackoverflow's URLs which are ...
7
votes
1answer
127 views
My website accepts anything infront of www.domain.com
I'm experiencing something very strange.
Whatever I type in the browser like for instance:
qqqqq.mydomain.com the homepage loads. There is even a URL indexed in google which goes something like ...
7
votes
3answers
433 views
What should filenames and URLs of images contain for SEO benefit?
We know that good site architecture usually looks like this:
example-company.com/
example-company.com/about/
example-company.com/contact/
example-company.com/products/
...
7
votes
2answers
512 views
SEO : urls : best place for the id
I would like to know what's the best location for an id in a SEO optimized URL:
http://www.site.com/id/slug-title
http://www.site.com/slug-title-id
What do you think ?
6
votes
4answers
458 views
Combine websites without hurting SEO
I have a friend that I'm helping out with some web design. Basically, the guy owns a few businesses that are all complementary of each other and he wants to combine them all into a single site. ...
6
votes
1answer
111 views
Process of automating domain registration?
I have a website where users register domain.com/user/username. I'd like to add a feature where users can search for and purchase a domain name that maps back to that URL.
I'm not sure how big of a ...
6
votes
3answers
187 views
In terms of SEO, is it better to have a URL broken down by folder, or with dashed names?
I am creating a friendly url interpreter for my website. I have read dozens of similar topics on this site, but none that seem to address my particular situation. What I want to know is if it's ...
6
votes
2answers
1k views
Chrome causing 404's ending with “/cache/[hex-string]/”?
Since the last weeks we see many 404's on our sites caused by Chrome adding /cache/[hex-string]/ to the current page URL.
The hex strings we have seen are:
e9c5ecc3f9d7fa1291240700c8da0728
...
5
votes
3answers
257 views
Why treat these as different URLs?
These are all strictly different urls:
http://www.example.com/page
http://www.example.com/pAge
http://www.example.com/page/
http://www.example.com/paGE/
I get that it conforms to the strict ISO ...
5
votes
3answers
290 views
Clean URL: with or without “?”
Simple question
What is better:
http://www.example.com/product/123/subpage/456.html
or
http://www.example.com/product?123/subpage/456
As far as I know they would rank the same SEO wise, but my ...
5
votes
5answers
406 views
URL for separate mobile site
I've had a look through this site and found several similar questions but none which address my current needs.
Normally I create responsive sites but on occasion I will create a 'desktop' and a ...
5
votes
3answers
698 views
Why are YouTube URLs so ugly?
I'm just wondering why YouTube URL is so ugly (i.e unreadable and not friendly to search engines). Why they don't care about SEO? My friend said that it's because they are the top website now. But how ...
5
votes
4answers
239 views
I want to run a URL shortener for my own usage, what do I need to do?
I am tired of using external URL shorteners, my favorite "tr.im" went out of business. I know there are some that will do reporting for me, but I want to run my own, so I can see the usage myself, for ...
5
votes
6answers
937 views
SEO: do we need to redirect also pages with final slash?
i read on Google SEO REPORT CARD that for search engines this page:
http://www.domain.com/somepath
is a different page than this one:
http://www.domain.com/somepath/ (note the final slash '/')
...
5
votes
4answers
896 views
Are shorter URLS better for SEO?
Many people shorten their URLs. But as per my understanding it creates overhead of extra redirection, other can not guess about the target article with their url, and it should be less friendly for ...
5
votes
3answers
169 views
Organizing website files
I want to start creating my website but I have a few questions.
http://website.com/directory/webpage - in this kind of website, it does not display a .php or .HTML extension at the end. How to ...
5
votes
2answers
417 views
Should a URL match the page's title?
Should the URL of a page match its title? For example:
Http://example.com/about-cats.html
<title>About Cats</title>
Furthermore, if that title were to be changed by the page's author, ...
5
votes
3answers
236 views
Should a canonical URL be search engine friendly?
I'm using Drupal with search engine friendly URLs. The way Drupal works is that there's two ways to reference a node with SEF URLS switched on:
The SEF way, eg. ...
5
votes
2answers
281 views
include full category hierarchy in url or only the “leaf”?
I'm currently redesigning a site that organizes information into categories. Some of these categories contain subcategories (and some of those contain even more subcategories).
I'm trying to decide ...
5
votes
2answers
3k views
Friendly URLs: is there a max length for search engines?
People from stackoverflow have been working closely with google team to help them make the panda algorithm more efficient, so I guess they've learned a lot from the google team.
Thus they may have ...
5
votes
1answer
435 views
Sitemap XML version vs simple text (urls list) version, do you know what are the pros?
I usualy submit simple text urls list as sitemap on Google webmaster tools. It's just a matter of simplicity, a simple text file is lightweight, easier to read also for humans (actually for me). :)
...
5
votes
3answers
10k views
How to remove trailing slashes from URL with .htaccess?
The situation
Across the entire domain, we'd like the URLs to hide file extensions and remove trailing slashes, independent of the domain name itself (as in, works on any domain).
Sample of our ...
5
votes
3answers
73 views
Do I really need to remove special characters in a URL?
I have an FTP account shared with friends where we upload underground music albums and then we use the links to share the downloads in a music forum. The problem is that the album names are in french ...
