Google.com: Dynamic vs. Static URLs

Below a compilation of quotes from Google regarding Dynamic & Static URLs. See highlights in orange. Thanks Joe!

Info from Google.com Regarding Dynamic & Static URLs

http://www.google.com/ads/glossary.html
Search optimization. Tactics and techniques that make it easier for spiders to find your page, contributing to higher ranking on a list of search engine results. Basic optimization starts with listing relevant keywords in your metatags and building clear and descriptive words into page copy, title, text hyperlinks, and image file names. It's also important to design your site on a logical link structure and follow standard HTML conventions, avoiding the use of frames, dynamic URLs, Image Maps, and JavaScript for navigation.


http://www.google.com/webmasters/2.html
Your pages are dynamically generated. We're able to index dynamically generated pages. However, because our web crawler could overwhelm and crash sites that serve dynamic content, we limit the number of dynamic pages we index. In addition, our crawlers may suspect that a URL with many dynamic parameters might be the same page as another URL with different parameters. For that reason, we recommend using fewer parameters if possible. Typically, URLs with 1-2 parameters are more easily crawlable than those with many parameters.


http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html
If you decide to use dynamic pages (i.e., the URL contains a "?" character), be aware that not every search engine spider crawls dynamic pages as well as static pages. It helps to keep the parameters short and the number of them few.


http://www.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=745
Consider creating static copies of dynamic pages. Although the Google index includes dynamic pages, they comprise a small portion of our index. If you suspect that your dynamically generated pages (such as URLs containing question marks) are causing problems for our crawler, you might create static copies of these pages. If you do, don't forget to add the dynamic pages to your robots.txt file to prevent us from treating them as duplicates.


http://www.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=745 (Duplicate content)
Don't create multiple copies of a page under different URLs. Many sites offer text-only or printer-friendly versions of pages that contain the same content as the corresponding graphic-rich pages. In order to ensure that your preferred page is included in our search results, you'll need to block duplicates from our spiders using a robots.txt file. For information about using a robots.txt file, please visit http://www.google.com/remove.html

fantastic

I missed this somehow. Great bit of info

Referring to the 'duplicate content' section - that means the vBulletin archive feature should be blocked from the spiders, no?

Using vBSEO you can have the archive thread links show up as 301 redirects to the actual thread.

Originally Posted by Keith Cohen

Using vBSEO you can have the archive thread links show up as 301 redirects to the actual thread.

They aren't 301 redirected though are they? I though VBSEO just rewrote the urls to point to the actual thread. It wouldn't make since to 301 redirect them. Unless I am missing something.

You have both options.

If you have an established forum and have been using the archive, you can rewrite and 301 redirect them to preserve the pagerank.

Originally Posted by Mike

You have both options.

If you have an established forum and have been using the archive, you can rewrite and 301 redirect them to preserve the pagerank.

Ahhh ok I got ya

Does VBSEO Generate Dynamic URL's?

Originally Posted by tanuj

Does VBSEO Generate Dynamic URL's?

We generate static URLs from dynamic URLs.

Static URLs commonly end in .html.

Dynamic URLs commonly end in .php, .asp, .pl, etc. with additional data such as ?name=you attached, etc.

Static URLs provide SEO benefits.

good info and it cleared a few things up.

Im new here but everything i am seeing is looking good.

what about the category numbers in dynamıc URL? I do not want my URLs to be so long. Can I eliminate the category number and description, so that only the forum title will appear in the URL?

Thanks for the information . useful

Originally Posted by Joe Ward

We generate static URLs from dynamic URLs.

Static URLs commonly end in .html.

Dynamic URLs commonly end in .php, .asp, .pl, etc. with additional data such as ?name=you attached, etc.

Static URLs provide SEO benefits.

So ending files in .html ends up doing better then the ones ending in / like /help/ does better then /help.html?

Thanks

We do not have conclusive data available to compare .html versus the virtual directory structure we use here. However, the most vital part is that both vBSEO presets will achieve full link consensus.