dmsinger
08-29-2006, 04:30 PM
My instinct is no, but I'm not sure, so I figure I'll get a few opinions here.
Let me explain.
I have this url:
/page/a/b/c/d
a, b, c, d are variables. They're in order of importance.
All variables have a default and you could go to any of these urls:
/page/a/b/c
/page/a/b
/page/a
/page
However - I've just added new information that I never thought I would. It's going to create a lot of new pages. In order of importance, it's either before or after variable a, so we'll call it variable aa.
So, if I was setting this up from the start, I'd do something like:
/page/a/aa/b/c/d
And, theoretically, with clever redirects, I still could for some pages, and others would simply change. But I'm not looking for all the search engines to read the big changes and figure it all out. I'm not looking to really have to be so clever with redirects either - but perhaps long-term, it's for the best.
To give an example of why I might want to reorder:
variable d is commonly a page number. I don't use it for linking, but once you're there you'll see /2 on end of the url of the next page. So to link to the new material, I'd always have a /1 in front of the /aa and therefore would always be using the longest url possible. Not so sure I want that.
Has anyone had to make a decision like this before? I know it's not Earth-shattering, but I'm just throwing this out there in case someone went through this and came across something I haven't thought of yet.
Let me explain.
I have this url:
/page/a/b/c/d
a, b, c, d are variables. They're in order of importance.
All variables have a default and you could go to any of these urls:
/page/a/b/c
/page/a/b
/page/a
/page
However - I've just added new information that I never thought I would. It's going to create a lot of new pages. In order of importance, it's either before or after variable a, so we'll call it variable aa.
So, if I was setting this up from the start, I'd do something like:
/page/a/aa/b/c/d
And, theoretically, with clever redirects, I still could for some pages, and others would simply change. But I'm not looking for all the search engines to read the big changes and figure it all out. I'm not looking to really have to be so clever with redirects either - but perhaps long-term, it's for the best.
To give an example of why I might want to reorder:
variable d is commonly a page number. I don't use it for linking, but once you're there you'll see /2 on end of the url of the next page. So to link to the new material, I'd always have a /1 in front of the /aa and therefore would always be using the longest url possible. Not so sure I want that.
Has anyone had to make a decision like this before? I know it's not Earth-shattering, but I'm just throwing this out there in case someone went through this and came across something I haven't thought of yet.