Are clean mobile URL's necessary?

[recbrands]

Adding code to redirect/clean up ugly URL's slows down mobile site performance, so it is necessary if we are already using rel=alternate tags on our desktop/www pages?

[KristinaKledzik]

Hi Recbrands,

Nope. Actually, the importance of clean URLs is dropping as people pay less and less attention to them. They were incredibly important a few years ago, but now, I don't recommend that my clients change their URLs unless they're going through a massive site redesign anyway.

I'm a little worried about your rel=alternate tags, though. What are you using them for? You should only have one location for information, and if you have two, you should use rel=canonical.

Hope this helps!

Kristina

[recbrands]

This is what I'm referring to: <link rel="alternate" media="only screen and (max-width: 640px)"  whenever="" a="" spider="" visits="" your="" desktop="" site.=""  works="" much="" the="" way="" rel="canonical" does="" for="" mobile="" to="" when="" separate="" url's="" are="" used="" websites="" and="" is="" useful="" responsive="" design="" not="" an="" option="" or="" isn't="" ideal="" company's="" site.<="" p=""></link rel="alternate">

Reference:

https://developers.google.com/webmasters/smartphone-sites/feature-phones

Separate URLs > Dedicated URLs configuration

[KristinaKledzik]

Ah, I see, I thought you were using them to point to another mobile page with a "clean" URL.

So, sounds like you've properly connected your mobile and desktop sites. But, using a rel=alternate doesn't mean that the desktop URL replaces the mobile URL when it comes to search. In fact, it means the opposite: Google shows mobile URLs in mobile search results even when it's the desktop version of the site that has the authority to rank as well as it does. Mobile searchers are definitely going to see your "ugly" URL.

As long as you're okay with that (and I don't think that you necessarily shouldn't be), having an ugly mobile URL is fine, just not optimal.

[recbrands]

No, we were using them for the proper indexing of our mobile pages.

I've instructed our Dev team to continue using clean mobile URLs.  I imagine clean URLs would only increase the likelihood of better ranking since it's indexed sooner than the actual page source.  Especially with search engines working towards semantic search, it would be natural to assume URL structure would carry some weight.

Thanks for your input, Kristina!