Today nearly everyone uses a URL several times each day; we share them by email, Instant Messaging, or simply recall them from memory. Many of the dynamic sites of today have URLs that resemble this one: http://www.your-web-site.com/catalog.php?cat=category&product_name&color=product_id. The larger and more complicated a site becomes, the greater the number of variables the URL may contain.

Google makes a statement on one of their webmaster support pages that they will support this dynamic site, but only to a point:

http://www.google.com/support/pages/bin/answer.py?answer=470&topic=8490

"Google does index dynamically generated webpages, including .asp pages, .php pages, and pages with question marks in their URLs. However, these pages can cause problems for our crawler and may be ignored".

Google goes on to say that "you might consider creating and submitting a detailed Sitemap of your pages using Google Sitemaps."

The recommendation of a site map is extremely important, and it is one that every website owner needs to ensure they follow. Providing the search engines with a quick and easy way to locate all of your pages should be common sense. However this does not provide the complete picture of creating a URL that is easier to use and one that is short and descriptive. The URL should have information describing the content (not just a list of variables), and it should not be too long.

A rewrite engine like Apache's mod_rewrite, will accomplish several factors that will be beneficial to a site. First off, this makes website URLs more user friendly so they will be easier to understand and remember when shared with a friend or customer. Additionally this will prevent undesired linking, or stealing of content, and will not expose the inner workings of a site to users. More importantly for SEOs, these new urls are more search-engine friendly. As Google and other engines have trouble with websites that utilize complex variables as discussed above, every step that can be taken to ensure a search engine will be able to quickly locate, and index your content is important. Websites which are easier to index are more likely to have their content included in search results.

A URL rewrite engine can be presented with URLs in one form (one with several variables like the one above) and display information in another form (www.your-web-site.com/subfolder/something-ABC.html). A rewrite engine allows URLs to be cleaned up and made friendly by creating a set of rewrite rules, rather than modifying the configuration of the web server software.

A good example of the setup of a rewrite can be seen in this discussion at Search engine watch http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=3925

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