Entries from Search Engine Roundtable tagged with 'urls'

Trailing Slashes: Root Domain Same Page But File Names Can Be Different Pages

A Google Webmaster Help thread has confirmation from Google on an old topic in SEO, the trailing slash. Here is the quick answer: seroundtable.com is the same as seroundtable.com/seroundtable.com/page is not the same as seroundtable.com/page/ I believe the last time...

Fragments (Pound Signs #) In URLs Are Not Duplicate URLs

A Google Webmaster Help thread asked if he should include fragments (i.e. the # signs found in some URLs) in the new parameter handling feature in Google Webmaster Tools. Again, parameter handling in Google Webmaster Tools gives you a way...

75% of SEOs Feel Google Loves Keywords in the URL

About ten days ago, we asked our readers "Right Now, How Much is Google Loving Keywords in URL?" We have about a 185 responses in and I wanted to share the results. Overall, about 75% of the responses said that...

Ultimate URL Shortening Guide

Danny Sullivan's Analysis: Which URL Shortening Service Should You Use? has an excellent overview of the various URL shortening services available. In Danny's write up, he goes over about 15 different services and rates them based on how they handle...

Proof Google Treats Underscores & Hyphens Differently?

Over a year ago, almost two years ago, there were rumors that Google would treat underscores in the URL the same way they treat hyphens in the URL, as word separators. Matt Cutts squashed the rumor back then, suggesting that...

Google Confirms "Typically" Treating / & /index.html The Same

In a Google Webmaster Help thread, Googler, JohnMu, might be stating the obvious, but it is always good hearing it from someone who is in the know. JohnMu, answered a question about links, but in his answer, he confirmed that...

Poll: Search Engines Should Pass Value From URL Shortening Services

The other day, we polled our audience, asking should URL shortening services pass link value? We now have 168 responses and I thought I share them with you. The response was overwhelming yes. 75% of the respondents said, these URL...

URL Case in SEO Matters

Sometimes we forget or forget to look after basic SEO topics. The other day, I caught one of my programmers allowing both capitalized URLs and lowercase URLs result in having the same destination page. Let's take Twitter as an example,...

Poll: Should URL Shortening Services Pass Link Value?

A Sphinn thread has discussion around a "quick" study done to test if URL shortening services like TinyURL and others pass any link value. Clearly, all the time you and I spend on services like Twitter, makes this question something...

My Mobile Site Is Duplicate Content. Oh No!

A Google Webmaster Help thread has discussion around a webmaster who noticed Google is treating his mobile site as a duplicate site to his main site. This user has his mobile site on a subdomain of m.domain.com, where his main...

My Pages Are Dropping Out of Google: What Do I Do?

Over the course of the past few months, I have hearing buzz from the forums and from people in the SEO industry that Google is dropping pages out of their index. How do these people know? Well, when they do...

Handling Tracking URLs & Keeping Your Link Popularity

A Google Groups thread discusses a classic SEO challenge, passing link popularity for tracking URLs. Honestly, I cannot sum up the issue better than the original poster: Our site uses query string variables in our URL's to track traffic and...

Major Google SEO Change: Google Prefers You Don't Use URL Rewrites

The Google blog has officially said that they prefer that in most cases, you should not use rewrites to change your dynamic URLs to static looking URLs. In my opinion, this is a major 180° on basic SEO practices. SEO...

Google Does Crawl & Index UTF-8 Encoded URLs

A Google Groups thread asks if Google can crawl and index UTF-8 encoded URLs. The quick answer is yes, Google can crawl and index these URLs. Google's JohnMu provided a link to the Google search results as proof, showing Google...

Google Says, Long URLs May Hurt You

We have talked about URL length issues and SEO and if long URLs are spammy in the past. But now we have a Google Groups thread with a Googler, JounMu, actually commented on a specific URL as being a bit...

A Googler's Sage Advice on Absolute vs. Relative URLs

A common question in the SEO space is should I use absolute or relative URLs. Absolute URLs are when you link a URL by using the domain.com portion as well, so linking to my authors page would be a link...

Yahoo Still Trimming Off Trailing Slash, Causing Webmaster Headaches

A new WebmasterWorld thread has complaints that Yahoo removes the trailing slash from the URLs, possibly causing 404 errors on the receiving site. This is not new, I complained about this issue back in 2004 and it is still an...

Benefits of Capitalized Letters in URLs

A WebmasterWorld thread discusses the inherent benefits of typing URLs with capital letters. A few thoughts come to mind: It's possible that search engines actually put emphasis on capitalized letters, though this is unconfirmed. It stands out for readers But...

Is This Strange Google Site Command Behavior?

I don't think this is exactly related to Google mixing up titles and URLs from yesterday (if you have examples, please comment, so Matt can address them at Google). But over at Search Engine Roundtable Forums, PPCBlogger showed us an...

Google Search Mixing Up URLs & Page Titles?

There are reports from several sources including WebmasterWorld that Google is having a tough time mapping the proper URLs with the associated page titles for those URLs. One report says that Google is treating searches for portal A on a...

Ask.com Fixes Crawler Issue With Badly-Formed URLs

Earlier this week, we reported that Ask.com Crawler Inserting Url-Encoded Spaces in URLs Causing 404 Errors. In short, Ask.com's crawlers were crawling badly formed URLs, causing tons of 404 errors in web server log files. Vivek Pathak, Ask.com's Infrastructure Product...

Ask.com Crawler Inserting Url-Encoded Spaces in URLs Causing 404 Errors?

A WebmasterWorld thread is reporting several webmasters noticing that Ask.com's crawler has recently been generating tons of 404 (file not found) errors on their sites. The issue appears to stem from Ask.com auto inserting URL-Encoded spaces into the URL. URL-encoded...

Can Multiple Hyphens in the Domain Name Raise a Red Flag with Search Engines?

A DigitalPoint Forums thread asks, can multiple hyphens in a domain name raise a red flag with a search engine? For example, if you have a domain name that is something like www.buy-shoes-now-online-for-cheap.com, would that type of domain raise a...

Re-Including Removed URLs in Google Webmaster Central

In April Google released a way to remove URLs in Google from within Google Webmaster Tools. There has been very little chatter about reincluding content that you have removed in the past. With Google it is very easy to reinclude...

Matt Cutts of Google Says Still Go With Dashes in URLs

Matt Cutts finally chimed in on the big buzz about Hyphens & Underscores Are Now Treated Equally in Google.com, which was broken by Stephan Spencer at News.com. Matt said, he "didn’t quite say that in the talk." What he did...

Hyphens & Underscores Are Now Treated Equally in Google.com

Until today, Google treated dashes and underscores in the URL differently. A dash (hyphen) between two words in the URL (i.e. keyword-phrase) would tell Google that those are two different words (i.e. keyword +phrase). In the past, an underscore between...

Frustration Over Google URL Removal Tool

In mid April, Google released a new way to remove content from Google. Since then, people have been using it but there has been a lot of confusion on how it works and doesn't work. A Google Group thread has...

Guide To Fixing Google Duplicate Content & Canonical URL Issues

As the discussion on duplicate content drones on (to the dismay of some), it's only natural that some really excellent how to guides come about. Part of the duplicate content discussion is the best way to avoid domain and canonical...

Keywords in File Names & URLs Do Help

We have confirmation over the long debated topic on if the keywords in the URL or file names help with rankings. Some SEOs say it does not help, some SEOs say it may hurt (still true - be smart), some...

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