Google Throws A Dynamic URL Spanner In The SEO Works

Writing by Nick Stamoulis Tweet

The search giant known to us all as Google has once again confounded all SEO experts by changing their views on a particular subject. In the past, the recommendation from all SEO consultants was to ensure that URL’s looked more like a static URL than a dynamic one. Now Google says they prefer the dynamic!

So, after webmasters the world wide have spent hours carefully crafting titles and URL’s for the benefit of the SEO, Google says it would prefer a yoursite.com/?232 instead of a plain English URL? To quote the official Google statement on the subject:

Does that mean I should avoid rewriting dynamic URLs at all?
That’s our recommendation, unless your rewrites are limited to removing unnecessary parameters, or you are very diligent in removing all parameters that could cause problems. If you transform your dynamic URL to make it look static you should be aware that we might not be able to interpret the information correctly in all cases

Should you now change all your static looking URL’s back to dynamic? I suggest not making any changes yet. If your pages have been indexed and they are ranking reasonably well, leave them as is. If your pages are not ranking well then perhaps making a change could help. If the page has been indexed then you will need to redirect. The problem, from an SEO perspective, is that any changes involving a redirect can take quite a while to take effect.

For the future, it is your choice. However, the same applies to future pages, if your pages are being indexed and you’re ranking reasonable well; don’t fix what isn’t broken – business as usual. If your pages are not ranking well, or not being indexed quickly, check that your SEO processes are okay, if they are then perhaps reverting to pure dynamic URL could make a difference.

This will become a major problem in the future. Not the URL’s, but Google’s ability to make drastic changes to the ‘rules’ at will and with little thought to the consequences. In this case, creating for the ‘user’ has definitely gone out the window. As a user myself, I would much rather see a URL that I can read, not a set of meaningless numbers and symbols. I think you can brace yourself for many more major SEO changes as Google tries to produce search results tailored to individuals.