Many in the SEO world have long questioned the neccessity of re-writing dynamic URLs – those that pull content from databases – into static URLs that appear to end with a finite .php/.asp/.html/etc. A dynamic URL is often criticized by search optimizers because of the difficulties search engines have had indexing and reading them in the past.
Currently, however, Yahoo!, MSN, Google & Teoma all have dynamic pages in their index and in the top search results for many different searches. It would seem the issue with search engines has dissipated. However, the usability issue of dynamic URLs still exists. From a user perspective a URL in the form of – http://www.site.com/page.html is considerably friendlier than a URL written as http://www.site.com/page.php?ID=2&TAGformat=945bb399ls3.
No matter if it’s posting the URL to a website, sending it in an email, or writing it on a notepad for later, the dynamic URL is something that is distinctly unfriendly for users. The advantages of mod_rewrite and other tools that allow for the conversion of dynamic URLs into static ones may be lessened by the new abilities of the search engines, but they are not altogether gone.
