This week Google discussed in their blog the difference between dynamic URLs and static URLs.
What is a static URL?
A static URL is one that does not change, so it typically does not contain any url parameters. It can look like this: http://www.example.com/archive/january.htm. You can search for static URLs on Google by typing filetype:htm in the search field. Updating these kinds of pages can be time consuming, especially if the amount of information grows quickly, since every single page has to be hard-coded. This is why webmasters who deal with large, frequently updated sites like online shops, forum communities, blogs or content management systems may use dynamic URLs.
What is a dynamic URL?
If the content of a site is stored in a database and pulled for display on pages on demand, dynamic URLs maybe used. In that case the site serves basically as a template for the content. Usually, a dynamic URL would look something like this: http://code.google.com/p/google-checkout-php-sample-code/issues/detail?id=31. You can spot dynamic URLs by looking for characters like: ? = &. Dynamic URLs have the disadvantage that different URLs can have the same content. So different users might link to URLs with different parameters which have the same content. That’s one reason why webmasters sometimes want to rewrite their URLs to static ones.
Why does this matter?
It used to be difficult for Google and the other search engines to crawl dynamic URLs. Early on in my web career I had to painfully rewrite my site code to make the pages static so they could be picked up properly.
The good news is now Google can pick it up properly. There still are, however, a number of downsides with using dynamic over static URLs including:
- Lower click through rate through search engine results (and other campaigns like newsletters, emails, etc)
- Not usable in branding campaigns as people won’t remember the link
- Lower relevancy scores because your keywords are not in your URLs
- Lower likelihood that you’ll get linked to with the anchor text you’re looking for
Many content management systems like the forums software phpbb automatically create dynamic urls and changing them to static can be quite challenging. Google is recommending that you not change the links because it won’t make a difference because they can still crawl your pages.
My recommendation would still be to move to static links but make sure you do it properly and don’t crash your pages. Hire someone to do it for you if you don’t know what you’re doing. It may be true that Google can crawl the pages but without your keywords in your urls you won’t rank as prominently and you won’t get as many clicks on your links if you’re using a dynamic structure.
