Using htaccess to change .php to .html

Does it hurt your SEO if you use htaccess to change your filenames from .php to .html?

I'm thinking google can detect this because of the lack of file date.

I once MOD-Rewrit my PHP pages to HTML using the .htaccess file.

It did my SERPs no harm at all. In fact - I noticed the new HTML pages were getting crawled a lot more frequently than when they were PHP ID's.

Yes static html is much better than dynamic php. Mod rewriting is a good idea in this case.

hmmm... the .php part is disadvantages to the .html extension?

does that make sense?

a "keyword in url is helpful" (a little) - the extension is a non-issue.

So what you're saying is that
http://www.example.com/hello2.html will be treated the same as
http://www.example.com/hello.php?id=2

Changing the file extension will not make it a static page.

Yes Exactly changing file extension doesn't make any sense.
what matters is:

Static pages are given more weight age than dynamic pages (which include query strings like ?,=,& and all..).
Whatever programming language you are using whether asp,.net,C#,Java doesn't matter, in the end on client side everything is pure HTML which will be displayed in browser.

So try to convert your pages to static pages without query strings that will help you from SEO point of view, changing file extension makes no sense.

Dynamic or static matter not in today search engine world... looking at it from a different view the generated page is generate in both cases "BEFORE" any crawling can occur SO .php?p=1 is identical to 1.html

Therefore a mod rewrite rule from .php?p=1 to 1.html changes nothing "SEO-wise"... what search would you think this impacts on? .... all searches regardless of term necause a domain use the letters html versus php? ..you can't conclude that any search engines built into their ordered ranks an algorithm that attempts to rank unrelated results for a specific phrase... (which is what you are saying if the use of html is a ranking advantage.

BUT a mod rewrite rule from .php?p=1 to keyword.html can have a little impact "SEO-wise".

...but so can mod rewrite rule from .php?p=1 to /keyword -- where the index.php is the extension ot to php?keyword but you have the same impact as keyword.html

Doesn't that say the opposite of this:



Forget the word "static"... a page request from a search bot gets php?p=1 identically as it does 1.html -- even though the former was generated dynamically upon request and the latter was lying in wait for the request... neither has an advantage over the other.

Dynamic pages don't have any physical existence in your site they are generated on temporary basis as per user request....so mostly BOTS unable to crawl these kind of temporarily generated pages..

On the other hand Static pages do have physical existence in your website thats why weight age is given to them because they can crawled frequently by BOTS....

Search engines say that /car/lexus/gs300.html is easier for them than /index.php?vehicle=car&maker=lexus&model=gs300. Google claims they have no problem if the number of variables is not too large (/1.html should not be better or worse than /index.php?p=1 for Google).

I prefer the rewritten URL's for their user-friendliness anyway.

Yes, search engines can see that /car/lexus/gs300.html is generated dynamically with the last modified date.

Jean-Luc

Most Bots? Googlebot (Google), Slurp (Yahoo), and MSNbot (MSN) account for 94% of all referrals and they do just fine with dynamic urls - so we are down to 6% left...

I'm not competent in that 6% percentile... can you enlighten me...

What bots have a problem with dynamic urls... name them?

... and what is the average referral percentage?

Surely if this is a major concern you should have that info at your fingertips.

ok Fathom... i think following question will better explain situation :

just tell me if i have following two pages :

wwwdotexampledotcom/index.php/garry.php
AND
wwwdotexampledotcom/index.php?name=garry&id=300

Former has proper navigation from index page and physically exist on website,while later has been generated temporarily by fetching values from database and has no physical existence.

Now does these both will be treated as same or G BOT will give any priority/weight age to any of above??


Thanks
GSL