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Went Hot: September 23, 2008 - 7:48 am
Posted By: hotwheel 284 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com) my network
Category: Google SEO
22 Comments
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SimonHeseltine
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Hobo
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UtahSEOpro
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2advance
Comments
-- duoble post --
It is dangerous as often it is done badly, exposing as much Duplicate Content as it is hiding.
Additionally, if you don't redirect all the dynamic URLs over to the static-looking format, you increase the problem even more.
One thing that Google does is strip back longer URLs to see what a shorter URL will return.
That is, if they find a URL like somesite.com/folder/file.html they will strip it back to see what somesite.com/folder/ returns. For a rewritten URL, it might return nothing or some random Duplicate Content, whereas on a normal site that URL would have returned the index page from the folder or a bare file listing.
Another thing that badly implemented URL rewriting does, is to wrongly implement what happens when a URL does not exist. The forum/blog/CMS returns an error message to the user to read, but does so with a "200 OK" HTTP status, rather than a proper "404" in the HTTP Header. That confuses the heck out of of bots, as the site serves infinite Duplicate Content.
Google now probes every site with a random filename like /noexist7382062706343724085264362790.html to see what is returned and verify the 404 handling.
Badly done rewriting can also see a request for /robots.txt ending up being handed to the CMS and some random template-driven page being returned, which must upset their bot greatly.
Whilst I appreciate the scope for error is significant, and subsequent problems that can be caused equally significant, wouldn't it be better for Google to acknowledge this also. Rather than say rewriting is bad, say its prone to error and you really should no what you're doing with it to avoid causing problems.
It must be difficult for Google to address the entire web with posts such as these. More seasoned practitioners will be able to make a judgement call, though I can see clients arguing with their consultants and agencies over this in future.
@hotwheel And it demonstartes why URL rewriting is bad. Try to click on this:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/09/
As far as I'm concerned, this is a "jump the shark" moment.
@donna who is jumping which shark? Who do you see as The Fonz in all this?
Google is Fonzie.
Google, in its ever-powerful, know-everything wisdom, tells us little webmaster minions not to do all that "hard stuff" because "we'll probably do it wrong, and make matters worse". Instead, we should just "trust them" to get it all figured out. Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot that we are all idiots. Perhaps we should just all go back to the days before dynamic sites were possible, so we don't get any of that "hard stuff" wrong.
This is all so wrong on so many levels, it's just unbelievable.
I can't even speak without spitting. Oh, and wait, Google would now rather we give them duplicate content (cuz, ya know, they never get that wrong either as they recently informed us).
Oh, and wait again - That post itself had a rewritten url.
Oh, and wait wait wait - throw usability out the window too while you're at it.
I can't even believe this. They really need to rethink what they've said.
Sure, ok, Google, if you want to tell us that getting the rewrite wrong can be dangerous - fine. Tell us that. That makes sense. But the rest of it...NOT.
I totally agree - I also have to say that I thought that the article was incredibly badly written - it left me more confused at the end than I was at the start - and I'm meant to be a professional. God help the one-man-band outfits relying on Uncle Google to provide clear, concise information on how to succeed online.
agree this is just bad article that is just going to make things works
It's amazing how google is promoting the agenda of "just trust us to figure it out"
I don't buy it - yet. Google just isn't there yet. yeah, people mess up rewriting, but just because some do, and make the interwebz moar hard for their engine to figure out, doesn't mean everyone should be told not to do it.
Is there some approval process that these kinds of articles go through before they go out to the world? This article seems a bit irresponsible.
That article is absolutely ridiculous and incredibly condescending.
Matt Cutts posted about this in the parallel Sphinn topic thread over at:
Google Says, Don't Rewrite Dynamic URLs To Static URLs
Well considering Google isn't the only search engine in the world... while Google may be getting better at dealing with dynamic URLs than the small guys, you might be shooting yourself in your webfoot by leaving horrific URLs as the only option for the 'lesser' search engines. Rewriting intelligently is a good idea for users, backlinks and the majority of the world's search engines. It is becoming slightly less important for godgle indexation.
Isn't it a little ummm what's the digital equivalent of ethnocentricity... engnocentric, of Google to say "It's okay, we can handle it, so you as a webmaster need not worry or do anything, because we are the web"?
Perfect for engnocentric SEOs.
I think this POST is misleading, not Google's article. If you actually read the article, carefully, Google never says "don't" do this, and "don't" do that. They more than made it clear that they were recommendations, and were letting people know the complications that may come with URL rewriting.
Although I am not a fan Google's corporate ways in the least, I think everyone took what was said a little out of context.
The Web community is so defensive of how Google impacts them, that their sensitivity to these types of posts get misconstrued.
Google has a VERY LARGE audience, so don't assume that they are always targeting the "Uber Webmasters" or the "little webmaster minions". This article may have helped those with horrific URL's. Not everyone likes to swim through all the BS Top 10 lists and other uselss link bait on Sphinn to find out information like this.
Agreed about it being a bad Google post.
Just read some of the comments of the post and you could sense a certain amount of confusion and panic from some webmasters who just blindly follow what Google says.
I just hate to think of the debates and explanation I will have to go through when some of the worried clients or some SEO-doubting web managers see these kinda posts and question the executions that we have done.
"The Web community is so defensive of how Google impacts them"
The Web community is so defensive of how a company with 70%+ search market share* impacts them -- unbelievable.
* in many countries, 90%+
f*ck Google
f*ck everything they do
Can't wait to see all the sites that start turning their mod_rewrites off now and go back to icky URLs.
[sigh]
I am sphinning this comment.
JohnMu has done great work at clarifying the issue in the comments of the original, google-blog, post. Just a shame nobody (so far) has added a footnote to the article to explain what both John Mueller and Matt Cutts have had to explain elsewhere.
The bottom-line is just this: If you don't know when to ignore the generic, general-audience advice given by any major search engine, then you don't know enough to risk ignoring that advice.
That is the same as it has always been. Search engines share advice for a general, basic-webmaster level audience. They expect the experts to be expert enough to know better.
The only problem with the post is that it will confuse some clients, (or at least their ill-informed IT/webmaster guys), who do not have that expert level knowledge of when to ignore the generic guidelines, but still expect to direct and approve the SEO experts they hire. On that aspect, this post by Google may indeed have done a little more harm than good, in that it adds one more little issue of trust and authority between clients of SEO, and the SEO experts they could hire.
So Google's PC statements are now becoming like Federal Income Tax law? Every section of tax law code has an interpretation. Where every interpretation has an intpretation. And, one of the Sphinn interepretations going around now is that the folks at Google writing these crappy PC statement do not know how to communicate because they have no experience communicating with their target audience. How reassuring?
Who would be dumb enough to pay $1,500 to attend a Google presentation on ranking well in Google? Certainly, not me. And, I certainly wouldn't waste my time reading John Mu's quips on Twitter, for the same PC reasons.
Yet another article that some folk are going to take as gospel.
I will continue to develop websites with REAL HUMAN visitors in mind. A simple static URL is so much easier to remember, type and link to. Could it be that Google are still trying to avoid link spam as static URL's are often written with keywords (which will be in the links) in mind? How knows... but a terrible article.
I can't sphinn this just on that fact.