Echoing what Nick said, conventional wisdom is that it used to be (and
probably still is) better for search engines -- search engines are
better and better about handling this sort of stuff so it may not be a
big deal these days.

One thing to keep in mind though is to avoid multiple paths to the same output.

For example, don't let example.com/a/1/b/2 and example.com/b/2/a/1
resolve to the same thing -- enforce ordering in your parameters. The
reason is that some search engines may get confused and think you have
multiple copies of the same file which can negatively impact how that
one page ranks.

Avichal

On Tue, Sep 1, 2009 at 9:06 AM, Nick Sullivan<[address removed]> wrote:
> There are SEO benefits from the the directory/structure/approach. Search
> engines don't typically index items in the query string, and if they do,
> they are given a lower weight.
> So this:
> /search/q/php/development
> Will rank higher than:
> /search?q=php+development
>
> -Nick
> On Sep 1, 2009, at 8:45 AM, Robert Gonzalez wrote:
>
> Is it really just a matter of how it looks?
>
> On Tue, Sep 1, 2009 at 2:16 AM, Scott Hildebrand <[address removed]>
> wrote:
>>
>> So this project I'm involved with is doing queries this way:
>> /search/q/music/l3/ukiah/lid/2449750/l2/California/l1/United
>> States/r/300/jt/+/i/+/c/+
>>
>> It basically amounts to search being the controller, and then the rest are
>> key/value pairs. When there's no value it ends up just being "+"
>>
>> I think that's fugly and I'd rather see a traditional URL:
>> /search?q=music&l3=ukiah&lid=2449750&l2=California&l1=United
>> States&r=300&jt=&i=&c=
>>
>> Is there any reason why a traditional URL would be better, or am I just
>> outnumbered by the other engineers and out of luck?
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>
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>
> Robert Gonzalez
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>
>
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