07.27.07
Search Engine Friendly URL’s and security
I was telling a buddy about SEO the other day. We got to search engine friendly URL’s and he pointed out that what I was saying could be considered a security feature. When you have the question mark, period, ampersand, and equal sign in your URL you are giving people information about your system. Hackers can try to exploit your system if they know the syntax. It won’t stop them but it might stop the stupid ones. Kind of like an alarm does not stop a good thief. I always recommend removing those symbols for SEO reasons. This just gives me another reason to convince somebody to switch to search engine friendly URL’s.
Technorati Tags: search engine friendly url, search engine, google, seo
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SEO Ranter said,
07.27.07 at 10:18 am
That’s a pretty good point! I like it - certainly comes from a different angle than the one we usually approach. URLs using the ? are certainly more open to attack than rewritten ones, depending on the rewrite scheme.
Cheap Web Hosting Phil said,
07.31.07 at 3:26 pm
That’s a valid point. If you showcase your query parameters to the entire world than hackers can prey on your system. I always rewrite my urls. Don’t employ too much heavy programming either in shared hosting environment , though.
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Todd Harrison - LA Headshot Photography said,
08.02.07 at 6:43 am
I think this is a way under looked point. This make you more open to attack!
Sujan Patel said,
08.14.07 at 1:24 pm
Good point. get to two birds with one stone.
geri said,
08.31.07 at 9:37 pm
Thank you for this info. I have only worked with static sites. I had no idea! Wow…
Rafael - Seo Training said,
09.25.07 at 12:45 am
Yip, a pretty good point. Rewriting to friendly URL’s will help secure your system and can be index by a search engines. The Bad thing of using bad URL’s is that most search engines will not index any pages that have a question mark or other character like an ampersand or equals sign in the URL. So all of those popular dynamic sites out there aren’t being indexed. What good is a site if no one can find it?
Michael Search Engine Optimization said,
10.03.07 at 4:58 am
You have been commenting heaps on the issues of multiple url’s per page. When I corrected the url’s to have only one per page on vBulletin, plus did proper onpage SEO, rankings improved heaps (of course). But when I changed from string (one variable) to directory style url’s, I noticed no change in rankings of traffic (since I had seo’ed the website so well apart from that one issue) - http://forum.time2dine.co.nz . Google is certainly able to spider string url’s.
But the rewritten/directory ones look heaps better, and give more information about the thread.
(cont)
Michael Search Engine Optimization said,
10.04.07 at 9:06 pm
Yes, rewriting url’s to directory style from string variables can reduce potential for hacking, but if the underlying technology is known (ie they know its a vBulletin, or Wordpress blog… ), what is a url? - just a variable that is as easy to be exploited. Or if the cms is your own, adding a few miscellaneous strings in the url like you have written about for iis, is just as easy.
With the JoJoCMS that SearchMasters is written in, each url is checked to see if it is the correct url before rendering. Its nice when you don’t have to think too hard because the CMS is handling it all correctly.
We came unstuck when we had to cater for the adwords tracking url’s.
Now that is a potential security hole for websites. But I assume that Google can handle those??? __utmz - in fact, there are a very small number cached in Google http://www.google.com/search?q=allinurl:+__utmz&hl=en&filter=0 - 44 in fact, of which several are the proper thing.
Now is that a minefield waiting to explode?????
Alex bell said,
10.23.07 at 5:12 am
[...] Hello
i had no idea but thanks for sharing information.Agree Its nice when you don’t have to think too hard because the CMS is handling it all correctly.
We came unstuck when we had to cater for the adwords tracking url’s. .
[...]
Alex Bell.
Aelizia said,
11.18.07 at 11:13 pm
Hi,
Its a informative blog.I am not much aware of seo concept but somewhat i know in it.you had said in your post “When you have the question mark, period, ampersand, and equal sign in your URL you are giving people information about your system”, until i read your post. i am unaware of this.Thanks for sharing with us!
Auckland Restaurants Cristian said,
01.15.08 at 4:46 pm
Another advantage of using friendly URLs is that by not exposing the technology used makes changing from one technology to another a lot easier and a less painful process and you can avoid the potential for broken links and lots of required redirects.