Re: Value of a name in directory

Ignoramus760 wrote:

This is a very clear study proving that directory names are of supreme
importance.

Note that there is no such thing as a directory in an URI. Google doesn't
know if bar in foo/bar/widgets.html is a directory or not. So basically
what you say is that words in URIs are important. What's new?

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Ignoramus760 wrote:

On 2 May 2005 15:09:14 GMT, John Bokma <john (AT) castleamber (DOT) com> wrote:
Ignoramus760 wrote:

This is a very clear study proving that directory names are of
supreme importance.

Note that there is no such thing as a directory in an URI. Google
doesn't know if bar in foo/bar/widgets.html is a directory or not. So
basically what you say is that words in URIs are important. What's
new?

Well, two things. Google parses URI's and it probably knows (as we all
do) that '/' is a directory separator.

It is not. There is no way Google can see if bar is a directory or not.

Second, this case shows that
words in the URI are very important (not just important). They place a
pretty meaningless page before higher PR pages.

SERPs are not sorted based on PR.

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Ignoramus760 wrote:

On 2 May 2005 15:09:14 GMT, John Bokma <john (AT) castleamber (DOT) com> wrote:
Ignoramus760 wrote:

This is a very clear study proving that directory names are of
supreme importance.

Note that there is no such thing as a directory in an URI. Google
doesn't know if bar in foo/bar/widgets.html is a directory or not. So
basically what you say is that words in URIs are important. What's
new?

Well, two things. Google parses URI's and it probably knows (as we all
do) that '/' is a directory separator. Second, this case shows that
words in the URI are very important (not just important). They place a
pretty meaningless page before higher PR pages.

In general, / is a directory separator but not always. Google will just
be stripping the / in the URI and considering each part between the
slashes to be a word.

--
Chris Hope | www.electrictoolbox.com | www.linuxcdmall.com

Chris Hope wrote:

Ignoramus760 wrote:

On 2 May 2005 15:09:14 GMT, John Bokma <john (AT) castleamber (DOT) com> wrote:
Ignoramus760 wrote:

This is a very clear study proving that directory names are of
supreme importance.

Note that there is no such thing as a directory in an URI. Google
doesn't know if bar in foo/bar/widgets.html is a directory or not.
So basically what you say is that words in URIs are important.
What's new?

Well, two things. Google parses URI's and it probably knows (as we
all do) that '/' is a directory separator. Second, this case shows
that words in the URI are very important (not just important). They
place a pretty meaningless page before higher PR pages.

In general, / is a directory separator but not always. Google will
just be stripping the / in the URI and considering each part between
the slashes to be a word.

To the OP, see also:

"For *some* file systems, a "/"
character (used to denote the hierarchical structure of a URI) is the
delimiter used to construct a file name hierarchy, and thus the URI
path will *look* similar to a file pathname. This does *NOT* imply
that the resource is a file or that the URI maps to an actual
filesystem
pathname."

<http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2396.html>

So the / is just a level marker for a hierarchical structure. That a
part of this structure maps to directories on your server is just
coincidal :-D

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John Bokma wrote:

Chris Hope wrote:

Ignoramus760 wrote:

On 2 May 2005 15:09:14 GMT, John Bokma <john (AT) castleamber (DOT) com> wrote:
Ignoramus760 wrote:

This is a very clear study proving that directory names are of
supreme importance.

Note that there is no such thing as a directory in an URI. Google
doesn't know if bar in foo/bar/widgets.html is a directory or not.
So basically what you say is that words in URIs are important.
What's new?

Well, two things. Google parses URI's and it probably knows (as we
all do) that '/' is a directory separator. Second, this case shows
that words in the URI are very important (not just important). They
place a pretty meaningless page before higher PR pages.

In general, / is a directory separator but not always. Google will
just be stripping the / in the URI and considering each part between
the slashes to be a word.

To the OP, see also:

"For *some* file systems, a "/"
character (used to denote the hierarchical structure of a URI) is the
delimiter used to construct a file name hierarchy, and thus the URI
path will *look* similar to a file pathname. This does *NOT* imply
that the resource is a file or that the URI maps to an actual
filesystem
pathname."

http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2396.html

So the / is just a level marker for a hierarchical structure. That a
part of this structure maps to directories on your server is just
coincidal :-D

And there are many ways to map stuff to other "real" directory locations
such as the use of aliases in Apache and symbolic links.

And then there are uri rewriting tools where you can map a hierarchical
structure to whatever you want, such as mod_rewrite as used in my
recipes.electrictoolbox.com site where the entire site is run through
one script accessing a database; yet it *looks* like a regular static
directory and filesystem type website.

--
Chris Hope | www.electrictoolbox.com | www.linuxcdmall.com

Chris Hope wrote:

And there are many ways to map stuff to other "real" directory locations
such as the use of aliases in Apache and symbolic links.

See http://johnbokma.com/mexit/2005/01/0...onf-split.html :-)

And then there are uri rewriting tools where you can map a hierarchical
structure to whatever you want, such as mod_rewrite as used in my
recipes.electrictoolbox.com site where the entire site is run through
one script accessing a database; yet it *looks* like a regular static
directory and filesystem type website.

Yup, another one:

/foo/bar.cgi/widgets/bar

/widgets/bar *could be* passed as PATH_INFO to bar.cgi.

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John Bokma wrote:

Chris Hope wrote:

And there are many ways to map stuff to other "real" directory
locations such as the use of aliases in Apache and symbolic links.

See http://johnbokma.com/mexit/2005/01/0...onf-split.html
:-)

And then there are uri rewriting tools where you can map a
hierarchical structure to whatever you want, such as mod_rewrite as
used in my recipes.electrictoolbox.com site where the entire site is
run through one script accessing a database; yet it *looks* like a
regular static directory and filesystem type website.

Yup, another one:

/foo/bar.cgi/widgets/bar

/widgets/bar *could be* passed as PATH_INFO to bar.cgi.

Yeah I currently do that with my electrictoolbox.com site where
the /article/ part of the uri is in fact a PHP script called article
and the rest of the stuff becomes a PATH_INFO variable in PHP.

--
Chris Hope | www.electrictoolbox.com | www.linuxcdmall.com

Chris Hope wrote:

John Bokma wrote:

/foo/bar.cgi/widgets/bar

/widgets/bar *could be* passed as PATH_INFO to bar.cgi.

Yeah I currently do that with my electrictoolbox.com site where
the /article/ part of the uri is in fact a PHP script called article
and the rest of the stuff becomes a PATH_INFO variable in PHP.

Yeah, I have used the same thing here and there :-)

--
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