Hi, I'm redeveloping a site that pulls business' listings off a database and displays them for consumers. The listings are sorted by county (State for you in the USA). There's also a postcode (zipcode) search but I won't go into that.

I think the reason you've not gotten much response is that this method of generating content appears to be coming under heavy fire by the algos. It probably won't matter which method you choose, you have other issues that are much more challenging than the URI structure.

www.example.com/counties/Hampshire.asp

Let's look at the above example. I see that you are using .asp so that means Windows. Be careful, Windows is not case sensitive. You could end up with both /Hampshire.asp and /hampshire.asp which can be considered two different resources.

I believe this part of the string may cause some issues /counties/. Don't quote me on that but I would guess that most of the others who have this same data may be presenting it similarly? If so, there are footprints all over the place.

or
www.example.com/listHampshire.asp
or
www.example.com/list-Hampshire.asp
or
www.mywebsite/business-type-in-Hampshire.asp

None of the above do anything for "me". The first example is more "intuitive" in nature as it clearly describes the destination. The other two are a bit more fuzzy from my perspective.

www.example.com/counties/hampshire/

Would be my suggested format based on your question. The part that concerns me is the /counties/.

I'd be real sure that you've done everything you can to break the footprint of the data you are regurgitating. If its the same stuff that everyone else is using and you've not done anything totally different, I don't think you are going to see the results you are expecting.

I should perhaps have been more clear in my post... i'm not really questioning the SEO impact to improve my rankings, but rather checking whether any of the options ahead for URI structure will negatively impact my site's rank. the site is already #1 in most SE's for our top keywords, so i *really* don't want to do anything to upset that!

Also, our content is unique (apart from sites that steal our listings of course, but I've tried to put things in place to stop them). Its a fairly niche area. The database is our own.

What you say about .asp worries me a little, however. I used ASP to develop the dynamic part of the site largely because the client used Access and i know very little about databases (ie converting Access to MySQL, etc). Could you possibly elaborate on this quote?

I think the reason you've not gotten much response is that this method of generating content appears to be coming under heavy fire by the algos. It probably won't matter which method you choose, you have other issues that are much more challenging than the URI structure.

because that's the bit that worries me.

But in regard to the original question, perhaps if i went for www.example.com/list/Hampshire.asp that would be best? Avoid county alltogether, while still seperating out the database pages from the rest of the content (for my own administration)

- PM