Extensionless URLs

[Top Hat]

We are working on a redevelopment of our site, new back end technologies.

It will switch from a static site to a dynamic site.

One thing I'm thinking about implementing is extension-less urls

So for example the current url:
dress-up/acc/hats/char/traffic-cone.html

Would become
Fancy-Dress/Hats/Character/Traffic-Cone

The original page would use a 301 redirect to the new page (there is very little extra coding work, to make it work)

Will search engines penalize me?

Should I make that change?

Wikipedia and the W3C, use mostly extension-less URLs

 

[Faevilangel]

There is always a risk of penalisation from search engines from changing the structure of a site, but as long as you incorporate the 301's and keep the meta info and content the same, then you shouldn't have too many problems, you really only get penalised when you make major changes.

 

[Astaroth]

As your actually changing the whole structure... no one can say for certain. The 301 redirects will mean that you don't lose inbound links and the benefits they bring but it will not mitigate the change in URL.

If you simply went from dress-up/acc/hats/char/traffic-cone.html to dress-up/acc/hats/char/traffic-cone then in theory the only impact could be positive. What your proposing of cause may be much more positive if Fancy Dress is more beneficial than Dress Up

 

[ooh]

If there's a one to one mapping between old and new urls then I don't think they'll be any penalisation at all so long as you make sure the appropriate redirect is used; the existing SE weighting will be simply carried over to the new page. I will admit I'm not absolutely 100% sure on that but that's my impression/understanding.

You don't want uppercase in your urls though, so
fancy-dress/hats/character/traffic-cone
not what you had IMO.

Also the fact you're using full English words rather than abbreviations is a bonus.

Definitely make the change.

 

[crossdaz]

There is always a risk of penalisation from search engines from changing the structure of a site,

How does that work??

 

[mit74]

What benefits are there to extensionless urls?

 

[crossdaz]

What benefits are there to extensionless urls?

They look nice.

 

[Top Hat]

What benefits are there to extensionless urls?

They look nice.

They are simpler for the user, the user does not need to know what technology used to make the site.

Its much more future proof, you can change the back end technology and not need to change the URLs

They are all, only small improvements. With a new site I would look very hard at using them.

I'm trying to asses if its worth the effort/risk for me at this stage, with a redevelopment of our site and new technology used.

 

[Top Hat]

If there's a one to one mapping between old and new urls then I don't think they'll be any penalisation at all so long as you make sure the appropriate redirect is used; the existing SE weighting will be simply carried over to the new page. I will admit I'm not absolutely 100% sure on that but that's my impression/understanding.

You don't want uppercase in your urls though, so
fancy-dress/hats/character/traffic-cone
not what you had IMO.

Also the fact you're using full English words rather than abbreviations is a bonus.

Definitely make the change.

It will be 1 to 1 mapping.

I was planning to use the capitalized urls like:
Fancy-Dress/Hats/Character/Traffic-Cone

I was going to map all variations onto the same url so
FaNcy-DrEss/HaTs/ChaRacter/Traffic-CONE

Would point at the same url, I was then going to use the canonical tag so search engines mapped all the variations to the same url

 

[ooh]

Making it case agnostic is definitely a good idea (I think you get that automatically anyway, at least on an Apache server) but I'd make the default/base/preferred version all lower case myself. People are used to lowercase in computer/internet addresses in general. Introducing uppercase is added unnecessary complexity -- extra bit of thought required on user's part, departs from normal. For example if they're writing down the url or typing it in a bit of extra unsureness is introduced. Only times publishing/using urls with uppercase is good I reckon is when you use it say in an ad to help separate words to make it more readable , e.g. FancyDress.com. But if you're using hyphens, no need. I doubt there's any real right or wrong though, just different opinions.

 

[altwebdesign]

You can do it with .htaccess
However if you're using some sort of 3rd party shopping cart they usually have this function available to select, i recall wordpress do also, as an example!

 

[stephanielarry]

There is always a risk of penalty from search engines to change the structure of a site, but only if you embed the 301 years and maintain metadata information and content yourself, then you should not have too much trouble, you do not I really have a disadvantage when making major changes.