Why Did SEOmoz remove numbers from their blog post URLs?

[nicole.healthline]

Cyrus Shepard wrote a great post about Google News here http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-seomoz-gained-1000s-of-visits-from-google-news.

In the article, he cites an example of a post that was included in Google News (http://www.seomoz.org/blog/white-hat-seo-it-fing-works-12421) and mentions the importance of including numbers in the URL. But, if you check in the most recent SEOmoz blog posts, the numbers aren't there.

Why did SEOmoz remove these numbers?

[KeriMorgret]

Hi Michelle,

Numbers are needed in the URL if you do not have a proper site map for Google News. In step 5 of the first link, Cyrus mentions that SEOmoz created that site map, and has since been getting referrals from Google News without the need for numbers in the URL.

The numbers are usually not included in the URL on purpose, they're just there if two posts have the same title, and can especially happen in YouMoz if someone submits an article, it's rejected, and then they submit an updated article with the same title. Cyrus noticed that it was those posts that did well in Google News, then made it such that all of the blog posts are in the Google News sitemap.