John Bokma wrote:

> Chris Hope wrote:
>
>> Ignoramus760 wrote:
>>
>>> On 2 May 2005 15:09:14 GMT, John Bokma <john@castleamber.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