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Google Hates Dynamic URLs

How many times have you heard that? I want to smack someone everytime I hear them say that.

Actually, this was true...... in the 1980's. Back then, when a search engine came across a URL that contained a 'special character' such as '?' and '=', it usually didn't index it properly. Of course back then, most websites didn't have dynamic query strings yet. Nearly the entire web was built with static HTML.

These days Google, and every other search engine out there handle dynamic URLs just fine. And in fact, the vast majority or urls in Google are dynamic, with parameters passed in the query string with characters like '=' and '?'.

What Google doesn't like are SESSION IDS. There's an important distinction. Dynamic URLs are still unique per web page. However, If your website is passing session ID through the query string, Google's parse bots can get stuck (and actually cost you quite a bit of bandwidth). Many of the older shopping cart software programs (osCommerce, X-Cart, Cube Cart) allow the passing of session ids in the query string to keep a customers session alive (as an alternative to forcing customers to have cookies enabled).

If your site is passing session IDs in the query string, then I'd say you have a problem. As long as it's not, then dynamic urls with '?' and '=' in them are just fine.

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