Google just recently posted an article talking about their opinion on dynamic vs. static URLs. In short, Google is saying that dynamically created URLs from a content management system, i.e. URLs that contain information talking to a database such as:

/media_review.php?user_id=25&article_id=315

should be left as is instead of rewriting them to look cleaner (static):

/media-review/bruce/dnc-ratm-concert/

Here’s a direct quote from their blog post on the topic:

Does that mean I should avoid rewriting dynamic URLs at all?
That’s our recommendation, unless your rewrites are limited to removing unnecessary parameters, or you are very diligent in removing all parameters that could cause problems. If you transform your dynamic URL to make it look static you should be aware that we might not be able to interpret the information correctly in all cases… …if you’re using URL rewriting (rather than making a copy of the content) to produce static-looking URLs from a dynamic site, you could be doing harm rather than good.

The problem is that Google seems to be making a recommendation on what is best for their search engine crawling and not what is best for the user or web usability in general. There is no debate, URL rewriting makes websites easier to use. It makes people understand what they will be looking at when they visit a link, and in general provides clearer information than dynamic URLs. For instance, here on our blog you can see all of my posts by going to http://blog.imulus.com/bruce the url is clear and easy to understand. If you want to see all my posts for a certain category you can do this http://blog.imulus.com/bruce/css. This functionality makes logical sense. Websites with extremely complicated URL calls can utilize rewriting to help their viewers better understand where they are on the site. And in regard to marketing materials — the time I see a company willing to use a url with ?id=237 at the end for a marketing or advertising campaign will be my first.

The fact is this, URL rewriting is an extremely useful tool (ironically Google’s blog post about dynamic rewrites uses rewriting for the URL). And while certain rewrite schemes may hide data that Google would like to parse, that doesn’t mean people shouldn’t use rewriting. The idea that a usable standard should be changed just to make Google’s web crawling better is ludicrous. Google throughout their history of search has continuously accommodated for changing website methods. By stating that URL rewrites are improper Google is taking a strike at one of the best standards to come out of Web 2.0. They’re suggesting a machine’s readability is more important than a human’s. And guess what: they’re dead wrong.