Short link URL's sans the product or category directory?

[gjt]

I've noticed that some Miva sites are using really short URL's, i.e. going beyond short links in that the URL doesn't even contain a product or category directory. IOW's

http://www.domainname.com/prod_code.html
http://www.domainname.com/category_code.html

...rather than...

http://www.domainname.com/product/prod_code.html
http://www.domainname.com/category/category_code.html

How is this accomplished?

[Ron Frigon]

Re: Short link URL's sans the product or category directory?

I've seen this done using Ultimate SEO Links^TM from Sebenza.

http://www.sebenza.com/products/SS-USL5.html

NEW Ultimate SEO Links™ Style Link:
http://www.domain.com/widget.html *product url
http://www.domain.com/widgetcategory.html *category url
http://www.domain.com/widget-p-widgetcategory.html *product url with category code for breadcrumbs, etc.

Cheers!

[wcw]

Re: Short link URL's sans the product or category directory?

it could be using the Emporium plus tool kit. It's one of the dozens of functions in the tool kit

[gjt]

Re: Short link URL's sans the product or category directory?

Bill, would using Toolkit be faster (performance wise) than the module?

I see where you say TKSL is faster for page reassignments (for multiple category and product page templates). I'm wondering if that is also true for the short links.

[wcw]

Re: Short link URL's sans the product or category directory?

Than what module? The built in short links is not a module. It is a rewrite of the .htaccess file. With modules that eliminate the "product" or "category", they have to do a database lookup to see if it is a product or category before displaying a page with that code. So is the built in faster than a module; probably but not anything a human would notice.

[gjt]

Re: Short link URL's sans the product or category directory?

Sorry, I should have specified... the Sebenza SEO Links module. But it sounds like the Toolkit solution is faster no matter what module is used, which is good to know.

Even if a human might not notice, I wonder if a search engine indexing a site would.

Thanks!

[wcw]

Re: Short link URL's sans the product or category directory?

Not likely. It is one link that it checks after being clicked on. If it was testing hundreds of links on a page then it might take a second, but it is not.

[ILoveHostasaurus]

Re: Short link URL's sans the product or category directory?

The Sebenza module (and a similar one from Netblazon) both can incur significant performance penalties to eliminate the designator. I haven't seen this implementation with Toolkit. It would be fairly easy to do an A/B test of it on and off to see the difference using the debugging features in Empresa 5.19.

You can get by without needing a module at all if you were willing to:

1) Keep the designator for either products or categories and only eliminate one, and
2) Lose the ability to reference screen codes directly, i.e. you can no longer use http://www.domain.com/sfnt.html for the storefront.

If that would work, you could always just adjust the htaccess file rewrites and make your product links /code.html but categories remain /c/code.html or any other designator you choose, and adjusting the templates to match.

[wcw]

Re: Short link URL's sans the product or category directory?

Tool Kit short links is in use at http://www.emporiumplus.com/SFNT.html

If you view the source on any of the pages and look in the footer you will see two 10 digit numbers. That is the unix seconds from the beginning of the TKSL function until the time it begins the render of the final target page. This gives you the amount of time it takes to run the query to determine if it is a product, category or screen. It is also checking for any retired pages you have put into the archive to be redirected so they don't have to be run in the .htaccess file. In most cases the two numbers are the same, indicating it took less than a second to do the check.

[Kent Multer]

Re: Short link URL's sans the product or category directory?

I also have a module for advanced short links. "Page Finder" lets you use the product or category name, instead of the code. You can also use any other word or phrase by typing it into a custom field, e.g. yourdomain.com/anything_you_want_here.html. The module is in use in a number of stores, and I haven't had any complaints about performance. You can see it in action at http://www.sagecycles.com/.

[gjt]

Re: Short link URL's sans the product or category directory?

Kent, I didn't see Page Finder on your site. Do you have any additional info?

I like that you aren't tied to product or category codes.

[Bruce - PhosphorMedia]

Re: Short link URL's sans the product or category directory?

Couple of things

1) Neither the human nor the search engine cares if you have "product" or "category" in the url. What is more important (SEO wise) is using something like "brass-door-handle-victorian.html" rather than "2301-12200.html". Better yet would be:

brass-iron-hardware-items/brass-door-handle-victorian.html and
brass-iron-hardware/brass-door-handles.html and

2) Brevity is NOT THE POINT.

3) Any lookup is going to incur a time penalty. .Htaccess if MUCH faster than any data base lookup. Mind you, we are talking about .01 ms, verses .1 ms types of time...but that will change with server load, so on a heavily loaded server, it could mean almost a full half second.

[gjt]

Re: Short link URL's sans the product or category directory?

Brevity is NOT THE POINT

I agree.

Keywords, readability/clarity/relevance (for search engine click through rates), eliminating parameters and not being verbose are what matter.

Short links came into vogue because of the mile-long "old style" URL's full of parameters and codes and largely meaningless to humans. Shortening those URL's is a no brainer, but of course the whole concept became over simplified to "Shorter is always better." But there is definitely a point of diminishing returns.

That said, brevity is nice if you want your full URL displayed in search results. But that factor shouldn't override other more important considerations.

[Bruce - PhosphorMedia]

Re: Short link URL's sans the product or category directory?

The irony is that search engines don't even care any more about queries. (i.e., ?screen=prod&product_code=10-1020). that, compared to /item/10-1020.html is basically no difference). They will give some points in some cases (as far as page rank) to pages that are Actually static..but that's by looking for things like session ids and comparing multiple hits.

[Kent Multer]

Re: Short link URL's sans the product or category directory?

Kent, I didn't see Page Finder on your site. Do you have any additional info?
I like that you aren't tied to product or category codes.

Page Finder is a semi-custom module that I've supplied to a number of stores. It defines a "page name" for every product or category in the store, which can be any word or phrase. The module can auto-generate the page names by taking the product or category names, and replacing invalid characters with a filler such as dash or underscore. If you're interested in getting a copy for your store, you can drop me a line by email to discuss it in more detail.

Thanks --