Ask HN: Does cryptic string in URL affects SEO?

This is a good question. The answer is subtle: Google isn't going to penalize you, but users will.<p>All things being equal, long URLs get clicked on in the SERPs less than short URLs. (Test if you don't believe me, which should go without saying.) Additionally, that bit of human-unreadable garbage suggests to many users that your content will be, well, garbage, where the competing<p><a href="http://example.com/birds/all-about-bluejays" rel="nofollow">http://example.com/birds/all-about-bluejays</a><p>will suggest to them "Well, heck, if I want to know about bluejays these are the guys." You only get a little space on the SERP to attract a click. The URL can be used as a resource there. Use it properly!<p>Additionally, since SEO is a game where winners win, I'd expect<p><a href="http://example.com/birds/all-about-bluejays" rel="nofollow">http://example.com/birds/all-about-bluejays</a><p>to get more links than your ugly monstrosity of a URL, which is going to cause it to rank faster. This is a self-reinforcing cycle, obviously.

I can't think of any reason that having the UUID in the URL would hurt your SEO in any way. You still have the slug, so key words are in the URL. As far as I know, having unrecognizeable data in the URL doesn't decrease the importance placed on your page.<p>One thing to consider is if using this method instead of some other method might decrease the number of links to the same URLs on your website. The more links there are to a particular URL, the higher it ranks. But all things considered, I think you're fine.

We always worked on the idea that parent directories carry more weight, it takes longer for the crawler to go down than across and the PR was always higher for those first level directories. (I'm talking in the past tense because I don't do SEO any more, though we used to get $1000 a month from AdWords).<p>Seems like your reason for this is to allow the same slug for multiple entries in the category. I'd more more inclined to just add one of . _ - on the end in the event of an unlikely clash!