If you research this question online you will find that people are divided into 2 camps:

1. Half think that Google does take clean urls into account when it calculates the rank of your website
2. Half think that Google treats clean urls the same as url’s with query strings

(For the record, I am in camp 1).

But we are asking the wrong question(s).

The right questions are:

• “Do users care about clean urls?”
• “Do they find them useful?”
• “Does it improve usability?”

Perhaps it is true that Google doesn’t mind whether the url is clean or a query string when it is calculating ranking, but I think humans care A LOT.

When you do a search, you’ve noticed that the keywords you used in your search are bolded wherever they appear? Well keyword rich urls get bolded too and that is another indicator to the visitor that your site is the one they should visit.

Everytime you get a click and that person doesn’t click “Back”, Google thinks “aha! I sent you to the right place!”, and that’s when you can climb up the rankings.

So if clean urls are good for the user, they are good for Google because Google wants what the searcher wants – to send them to the right website.

I think clean urls are worth it whatever the cost.

Everytime I have recommended clean urls to customers, and everytime I have changed over to clean urls on my websites, the web traffic has doubled over a 3 month period.

Users love them.  And so Google will value them more and more over time.

Need more fantastic Search Engine Optimisation tips like this?

Call me on (07) 575 8799 or email me.

- Sheldon.