Trigger words in URL's

[mrmr96]

Hi,

I was trying to read the comments on this article:
http://pistonheads.com/news/default.asp?storyId=20...

But here's the URL for the comments page:
http://pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?f=23&...

This has the word "hardcore" in it which is triggering the content filter at my office. I can get around it by truncating the URL manually to:
http://pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?f=23&...

But since there doesn't seem to be anything gained by having the title in the URL, how about taking it out so that words like this don't trip my content filter and get the page blocked?

Cheers

[4hero]

Google loves the title, that's one of the ways it finds stuff.

[grumbledoak]

4hero said:

Google loves the title, that's one of the ways it finds stuff.

Google will look at the title on the page. Putting extra stuff in the http address won't matter.

[JohnnyPanic]

grumbledoak said:

4hero said:

Google loves the title, that's one of the ways it finds stuff.

Google will look at the title on the page. Putting extra stuff in the http address won't matter.

AFAIK Google does actually use the URL in the algorithm, if it's relevant to the content it's an advantage to have it as text. It would better to have fewer parameters in the querystring, but IIRC the forums are based on code from days before SEO and Google-pleasing was so high on the agenda.

[zac510]

Humans like keywords in the URL too.

[mrmr96]

What do you mean?

[zac510]

I mean I can see the title of that thread in the URL in your post or in the search engine and decide whether I want to click on the link.

So I might be more likely to click a pistonheads link if I can see what the content is.

[mrmr96]

But the URL only contains the same words as the thread title and the html page title (appears in the window title bar) so I don't see that it adds anything.

Maybe we could at least put a filter in so that certain blacklist words are not used in the URL's?

[Mr Will]

mrmr96 said:

But the URL only contains the same words as the thread title and the html page title (appears in the window title bar) so I don't see that it adds anything.

Maybe we could at least put a filter in so that certain blacklist words are not used in the URL's?

There is a swearfilter which will stop anything offensive being put into titles, but it will not filter out words such as "Hardcore" which have a legitimate usage.

Having the title in the url is very relevant to google and other search engines, so it is not something we are going to remove unless large numbers of people are having problems.

As you have spotted though, the &nmt= and everything after it can be deleted without causing any problems, so I'd suggest you just continue to use this work around on the rare occasions it is needed.

[mrmr96]

Okie dokie.