Google Blog: Updates on Dynamic Versus Static URL Discussion

Originally Posted by briansol

Google is NOT the only search engine.

They can't just change their mind and expect everyone to follow.

when you get 73.48% of your SE traffic from Google (bearing in mind that's 70% of earnings are made from this percentage) unfortunately that's exactly what webmasters will do... whether they expect it or not is neither here nor there. SEO is SEO is SEO, at the end of the day if you want to be selective over what you implement then you can't really point the finger at Google when traffic and earnings drop.

In my mind you can either fight the machine or work with what you are given.

and that's why we need an 'Official Announcement'

I get over 85% of my traffic from google. I know what you're feeling.

But I 100% REFUSE to take a GIANT leap backwards to succumb to the 'man'.




My site is indexed GREAT right now. There is ZERO need for me to change anything because of this blog post.
This blog post does NOT mention new methods, etc etc.... they've had the technologies they speak of in place for some time before the blog post.

I anticipate ZERO drop in rankings because of this blog post, and I will continue to keep my url's re-written weather google likes it or not.

don't get me wrong, i'm not changing either. I don't believe for a second that Google would penalize static contents or established websites with established file structures. For all Google knows that what vBSEO urls are. As I said in my other post I believe that that blog post really only has a relevance to badley rewritten URL's. Bearing in mind that pages are indexed 85% based on it contents I really don't see this announcement being a problem at all for most webmasters.

I think that Google has like established some new intelligence in their algorithms. In particular, by analyzing duplicate content and recurring parameters, their algorithms can "guess" which formats are valid for content, which are duplicates, etc. This is what I would expect.

So, if my expectations are correct, Google is attempting to do for all sites, what vBSEO has already achieved for vBulletin. That is, we have eliminated duplicate content, eliminated all of the confusion of dynamic URLs, and achieved link consensus. They will likely make major inroads in reducing confusion and improving crawling efficiency, but I am doubtful that they will be as successful with achieving link consensus.

It's next to impossible for a 1 size fits all algorithm to successfully determine what is what in the spaghetti code mess of dynamic links and duplicate content.

There should be no negative impact for vBSEO enabled sites. You see, with our whitehat optimizations, it is clear that we are only helping Google. You cannot penalize for improvements! Some things you need to consider:

• Google's algorithms cannot possibly predict every URL format available, or how to achieve link consensus for your site.
• They could custom program for different major CMS or forum software, but over time these change and they would have to continually track this. Major analysis and work would be involved requiring constant algorithmic updates, and it would invite constant inaccuracies.
• So Google would have to rely on an imperfect algorithm to try to determine which URLs to follow and which to avoid. When the algorithm gets it wrong, even in the smallest of %-ages, then your SEO suffers.
• With vBSEO, that cannot happen because we take away all the guess work for Google.
• Their algorithms will never be anything but 100% accurate when crawling a vBSEO enabled forum, because vBSEO achieves full link consensus, eliminating ALL guesswork.

Consider this scenario:

Google crawls your site and using their algorithm determines which URL formats point to original, non duplicate content pages. It then also figures out which URL formats ARE duplicates.

So it starts skipping duplicate URL formats whenever it finds them.

Result is, anywhere those duplicate URLs are found, they are skipped and do not contribute link value to the actual content. This is a bad thing for sure.

With vBSEO we identify every URL instance and automatically convert it into a unique resource that cannot be skipped over or ignored. A vBSEO enabled forum will always pass maximized link value/link consensus whereas the same forum (without vBSEO) relying only on Google's intelligent algorithms is highly unlikely to achieve the same optimum state.

Change the entire Web?

Static URLs are found all across the Web including on the sites of Fortune 1000 companies and embedded into many major platforms, vBSEO being the most advanced offering of them all due to its full achievement of link consensus.

Does it seem likely that Google will now require all of these millions of sites, and billions of pages to revert to dynamic URLs or receive penalization or reduction of ranking in the search engines?

No - very unlikely, particularly given that webmasters who have optimized their sites in this manner represent the best content on the Web. Reducing the ranking of such content, in favor of resources where less care has been provided would drastically reduce the quality of the SERPs and would be a huge window of opportunity for competitors like Yahoo and MSN to make big jumps in the search market share as Google users start finding better search accuracy elsewhere.

This is not going to happen. It's so obvious to anyone how quickly SERP quality would be reduced, that this is certainly well known to Google's engineers.

The reality is that Google is just letting you know that their algorithms are getting smarter at dealing with dynamic URLs. They are going to attempt to crawl sites more efficiently. This may result in improvements for many sites that do not have the luxury of total SEO solutions like vBSEO.

But this is NOT an opportunity for sites that want to be successful from seeking out improvement. That would be a big mistake, as we all know the value of every click through to our site from search.

The power of vBSEO is in link consensus! This is very important. We do NOT just change your URLs from dynamic, parameter filled ones to static, HTML-like, "pretty" URLs. We completely eliminate duplicate content, maximize link value, and achieve full link consensus. This is a great time for many of you that have questions about how this will impact your forums to check out this simple description of link consensus and its value:
Pin the Tail on the SEO Donkey (with Link Consensus)!

So what does this all mean to you?

It should be nothing. Your vBSEO-enabled forum will still benefit from maximized SEO and the full achievement of link consensus.

For non-vBSEO sites, they will likely be crawled *faster* (since duplicate URLs should be skipped), but they will NOT achieve link consensus without vBSEO. And link consensus will always be one of the most dominant factors with success in the search long tail phenonmenon:
What is the Search Long Tail? - vBulletin SEO Forums

We will of course monitor the situation, but nothing significant is anticipated.

It's quite hard to correctly create and maintain rewrites that change dynamic URLs to static-looking URLs.

They are right. That is why so many of the vBSEO inspired copycats have failed.

Fortunately, it is the vBSEO Teams entire focus to tackle this problem. And, although next to impossible for any individual to achieve, our team has successfully developed vBSEO as a 100% link consensus application, likely to be the most advanced of its kind anywhere on the Web.

Pay careful attention to this comment:

While static URLs might have a slight advantage in terms of clickthrough rates because users can easily read the urls

Having access to Google's total clickthrough data, they are telling us that static URLs get better clickthrough rates?

Imagine how significant even a small %-age can be for forums that often grow to MILLIONS of pages... each of those pages having a slight better chance of getting clicked!

All in all, the article seems to focus on the mistakes most people make with static rewrites! Some of the examples include actually rewriting the session ID into the URL! If anyone ever did that, they would clearly demonstrate that they had absolutely no understanding of what they were doing at all!

The 2nd focus seems to be "it's too hard for you to do"... but not for you, because you have vBSEO and link consensus is our specialty, our focus, our life!

An interesting discussion I have a feeling it will be sometime before the dust settles on this one.

Anyway, I didn't post here to make that meaningless comment. I posted here to add my "observation". Shouldn't the URL for the Google blog be something like this then:

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/blog.php?year=2008&month=09&blogid=1234

That was a great explaination Joe !

Thank you

Good point regarding the blog. All of blogger.com is rewritten.

They key takeaway is still that they just don't want people to make mistakes. Note the part about the sessionIDs that they used an an example. If someone was so *misguided* to rewrite sessionIDs into the URL, then it would create an almost infinite # of URLs for every page!

Reality is, on large user generated content systems like forums, link consensus is absolutely essential for long tail success, and a rewrite is the only manageable system available to date to handle this... vBSEO being the only software I am aware of that has achieved it fully. The programmers among us know that generating a completely "real static" copy of a a huge dynamic site is not a feasible solution.

That make it for me

Originally Posted by iogames

That make it for me

me too !!