What's the rules on overly dynamic URLs ?

[stewbuch1872]

Developer says "Overly-Dynamic URL. Developer says that this is the hardest and complex part. It will be possible to change all of the search criterias to use ( / )
But in this case each of the pages will be indexed and every time listing gets added, content will get changed. Which for example Google will start blocking

what is the best way to address this and will google block as suggested ?

thanks

[djlaidler]

Hi Stew,

Firstly dynamic URL's are often used to assist with searching OR filtering on a site. The practice is an inevitable part of offering flexibility to the user.

The issue with overly dynamic URL is that, for example;

If you have three elements to your URL EG/ http://test.com/search?element1=a&element2=b&element3=c and each element has 10 options, google will eventually crawl 10x10x10 pages = 1000 pages. Overly Dynamic URL's can create thousands of combinations of a URL very quickly and each URL will be seen as a unique page by Google.

Most of these pages will have duplicated content (although different products in different orders) on it. Depending on the way this section works, you may want to block the crawling of this search section using robots.txt.

I would also go to webmasters->YOUR-SITE->configuration->URL Parameters From here you can advise Google what to do with each element.

Hope this helps!

Dan

[stewbuch1872]

Hey Dan, thanks, yeah that helps, much appreciated

cheers Stewart

[djlaidler]

No probs, happy to help