I am going to be creating a database with a bunch of suppliers. In this database I will have company names and some information about the companies and some other information.

The info will obviously change based on the company but the layout will be the exact same. This is why I decided to go DB driven.

My urls will look something like: http://www.mysite.com/country/provin...mp=companyname

I want to setup a rewrite so that if someone types in http://www.mysite.com/companyname that it will go to the above page.

The reason why I want the hiarchy is for SEO. If people type in the country or province or supplier name that I will still pop up.

Question: Am I on the right track or is this a waste of time? Will it actually benefit me even a little to have the extra hiarchy in the URL.

ALSO: I want the search engines to read the hiarchy but I only want the user to see http://www.mysite.com/companyname

Is this possible?? Or again, is it a waste of time?

Question: Am I on the right track or is this a waste of time? Will it actually benefit me even a little to have the extra hiarchy in the URL.

Not a bad option when you are trying to convert the urls to user friendly ones.

ALSO: I want the search engines to read the hiarchy but I only want the user to see http://www.mysite.com/companyname

Is this possible?? Or again, is it a waste of time?

I would suggest to go for it because that helps the user and SE will definitely not mind that from any point of view.

google have no problem spidering dynamic pages.

I usually do the "search engine friendly url" thing, but not because i think its more search engine friendly, but because i think it looks cleaner sand more professional.
From a google stand point though, it makes little, if any, difference.

Shab. - Thanks for the input.

Stox,

I feel that it is cleaner and more professional aswell. The rest of my site is setup in a hiarchy (not quite as indepth though). The problem with that is that I wanted to develop these *supplier* pages so that it can be controlled through the link (adding variables) as apposed to reading the URL to determine which page it is on.

I'm not sure the affect it has on search engines hence the questions. I would ideally like to have google see "http://www.mysite.com/canada/ontario/product/pro1" because that way in the organic results in google the green lined URL at the bottom of each result will look cleaner. BUT I do want to beable to control the page that is populated by the *link* so that I don't have to add code to the page. Do you follow my train of thought?

What do you think is the best way to accomplish this?

After you set up the redirect Google will see the same thing your visitors are seeing. It's not going to be one to Google and one to visitors. The good thing is if you set up the redirect properly (301 redirect) then any link building you've done for the old url will be passed to the new url and you won't lose anything. It may take a little time for Google and the other search engines to sort it all out, but it will all get sorted out.

My advice: Slap .htm on the end of your URL. If you dont it may appear a bit suspect to google as there a lot of IP cloaking scripts that do something similar.

Thanks once again for the great input!