Mod rewrite

[DarrenC]

This is the scenario;

Okay a question.

I have mod rewrote www.mysite.com/blah/blah.php?id=69 to www.mysite.com/69 - no problem but I have seen examples where the www.mysite.com/69 has the same PR as www.mysite.com - how have these people done this? If you do a link www.mysite.com/69 it has the exact same links as link www.mysite.com - so somewhere Google is picking up that /69 is the same as www.mysite.com

Any ideas?

[TWD-Tony]

I have just read that post 6 times and I'm still not clear what you mean EXACTLY (sorry)

I presume you mean "how do people get pages that are re-wrote to get the same ranking as the un altered page?

If this is the case then the answer is simple - you have to wait until Google has spidered the site and indexed the new URL's and then wait for the next PR update (every few months)

[DarrenC]

Sorry Tony.

I didn't mean what you presumed but thanks anyway :)

Example:

www.mysite.com has 2,000 links showing in Google to its index page and the new page www.mysite.com/69 which is a seperate page also shows 2,000 links to the page even though it's new, and has no links pointing to it.

Becauuse www.mysite.com/69 has 2,000 links it's ranked well in Google, but in theory the page has no links pointing to it at all.

It appears that Google thinks that www.mysite.com/69 is the same as the index page.

Any ideas how these people have achieved this?

Hope you understand me :lol:

[Enigma121]

Having done a bit with mod_rewrite I think I can offer a theory to explain this.

Note - I've just played around with this module too, so chances are I could have got this wrong, If so I'll eat some humble pie, here goes...

You have sent a rewrite request to the user's browser.

This doesn't necessarily effect the googlebot in the same way, it depends on the type of redirect used. Google is likely to ignore anything other than a "301" permanent redirect.

The confusion has lead Googlebot to conclude that www.mysite.com/69 is www.mysite.com. Basically it's made a false assumption.

Chances are you can't rely on this as it might be:

Undone on the next index update
Changed by an algorithm change in the near future.

If it's benefiting you, enjoy it while it lasts. If not alter your mod_rewrite to provide proper 301 redirect(s).

Hope that helps

[DuaneJackson]

Yep, it's all down to a 301.

A trick a while ago was to 301 a page to google.com for a while, then un-301 so you have a PR of 9 or 10, then charge a fortune to sell links on it before the next PR update drops it back down to it's real level.

[DarrenC]

The confusion has lead Googlebot to conclude that www.mysite.com/69 is www.mysite.com. Basically it's made a false assumption. If it's benefiting you, enjoy it while it lasts. If not alter your mod_rewrite to provide proper 301 redirect(s).

Hope that helps

It does help alot. Unfortunately, it's not my site that this is happening on, and I only noticed that a number of my competitors were doing something to make www.mysite.com/69 the same PR and links as www.mysite.com which meant the /69 page was outranking mine.

It's difficult to explain but the 69 is a property number, so they would be thousands of different numbers at the end of the /

I could play there game and do the 301 so it looks as any URL with a /number to be the same as www.mysite.com but could this lead to penalisation, it seems unethical to me, but if it's not black hat, then I'll join them.

What are your opinions on this type of technique?

Darren

[mattk]

Yep, it's all down to a 301.

A trick a while ago was to 301 a page to google.com for a while, then un-301 so you have a PR of 9 or 10, then charge a fortune to sell links on it before the next PR update drops it back down to it's real level.
I quite like that idea.

Time for some experimentation I thinks.

[Enigma121]

I quite like that idea.

Time for some experimentation I thinks.

Humm,

Before we all get overexcited, if Google (and probably most of the major engines) catch you doing this they will de-index your page, or at very list give you a severe SERP penalty.

I'm not going to recommend this. You have all been warned.

[mattk]

I have plenty of spare domain names that are currently wondering the Net looking for a site to point to!