: 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

@Radia820

Slightly off-topic but I try anyhow:

When I encounter URLs like www.example.com/product/123/subpage/456.html I always think that this is an attempt on creating meaningful hierarchical URLs which, however, is not entirely hierarchical. What I mean is, you should be able to slice off one level at a time. In the above, the URL has two violations on this principle:


/product/123 is one piece of information represented as two levels. It would be more correctly represented as /product:123 (or whatever delimiter you like)
/subpage is very likely not an entity in itself (i.e., you cannot go up one level from 456.html as www.example.com/product/123/subpage is "nothing").


Therefore, I find the following more correct:
www.example.com/product:123/456.html

Here, you can always navigate up one level at a time:

www.example.com/product:123/456.html — The subpage www.example.com/product:123 — The product page www.example.com/ — The root


Following the same philosophy, the following would make sense:
www.example.com/products/123/456.html

Where:

www.example.com/products/123/456.html — The subpage www.example.com/products/123 — The product page www.example.com/products — The list of products www.example.com/ — The root


(Sorry about spamming your question, @red -X)

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@Alves908

The first one is preferred. This is because it is interpreted as document, whereas the second one is interpreted as document up to product, and as query arguments later on. So search-engine wise, there is no difference between
www.example.com/product?123/subpage/456

and
www.example.com/product?p1=123&p3=456&p2=subpage

it is only human-eye friendly, but the search engine will not interpret it as a path. Moreover, I am sure that if a person would need to enter that in the browser manually, they will surely miss the question mark as it is not expected there (this is for path usability).

The first case (without the ?) will allow the engine to properly assign hierarhy (456 is child of subpage, which is child of 123, etc...). The second one will not.

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@Phylliss660

I usually use www.example.com/product/123/subpage/456. In my case, I've been better off using this kind of URL rather than URLs with parameters. It's your decision tough...

Also, using htaccess (if you're using Apache) you can get the rewriting of the pages quite easily.

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