Word ID on URLs. How bad?

I am facing a major issue here.
I am already tring to get rid of regular expressions and spaces on the dynamic pages of this site.
Now I found out that google doesn't like the word ID also cause it may look like a session ID.
What is ID is just part of a longer parameter like dept_id or sub_id???

Also, how long can a URL be to still be SE friendly.

This website I am talking about has LONG URLs, plus SPACES, plus SYMBOLS, plus word ID.
It seems like completely SE unfriendly.

Check it out:
detail.htm?stylepkey=11049&style_id=030%20COMBB0&dept_id=3&deptName=Parts&sub_id=50&subName=Campagnolo%20Parts&lprice=42.98&hprice=42.98

First I just wanted to have a ASAPI rewrite to replaces ?, &, = and spaces by -

Would that be enough?

We also have the problem of the product prices that have dots in it, and also the word ID in some of the paremeters...

Any ideas?

Thanks

dots are not an issue with google.
dots are good mmkay.


as far as the word 'id'...
if your url includes 'part_id'...and if google goes by the same rules that it uses in all searches...then it wont find 'id' in 'part_id'...but it will find 'id' in 'part-id'...the '_' is seen as a character....the '-' is seen as a space separating words.
[disclaimer: unless its got a special rule looking for the word 'id' in urls.]
but then wouldnt if find 'id' in 'steroid' and other words like that.

good point

The number of parameters you've got there is probably a bigger issue... google generally suggests to keep url's to 2 paramaters, if you're lucky url's with up to 4 or so *may* get indexed... but when there's 8 like in the example here, I think googlebot (and other spiders) will just look at it and go... um... no

I'd look into mod_rewrite (or IIS equivilant if you're not using apache) and rewrite your urls so that each paramater is displayed as a directory etc. I don't think you'll have too much luck otherwise.

I was thinking of using dashes "-".
You think "/" are better?
Thanks

I won't be able to get rid of all spaces. There are spaces on dept names and product names.
I can't replace the spaces by dashes "-" in those cases. The names come from the database, if I put dashes in there, the product names will be displayed with the dashes on the site.
So Product Name XYX will be displayed
Product-Name-XYZ...

Any ideas of how to work around that?

How is a mod-rewrite done for IIS servers? IS it also with a .htaccess file?
Thanks

I'm just in the process of moving to a dynamic website, ie. PHP and MySql and are looking at Mod Rewrite. Do you host your own site, or does a company do it for you?

I work and have several sites. The one I need to do a rewrite, and by the way I found out the name (ASAPI rewirte), is hosted on the company that developed the site.
I just manage this one.

Look for mod_rewrite on the web.