An Overview of URL Rewriting and its Benefits

With higher level of online competition among websites, many are considering URL rewriting that includes manipulation of a website link or its URL. After that it is transferred to a web server in a way that the respective link is modified in a dynamic manner. It is modified at the server that has several extra parameters and information too. Such changes are carried out by the web servers keeping the browser out of the loop which is associated with URL rewriting.

After a URL is re-written the rewriting engine scans it and does the necessary changes in the web address on the basis of already established rules and regulations.

So why is URL rewriting is used? What is the need for it? There can be varied reasons for it, lets see some of the common ones:

For making a URL user friendly. If you have introduced any new product or service, as you have a solo server side page the URL could be too long difficult for the user to remember it.

It helps in keeping the link structure of a site fixed and permanent. Link rot can also be kept in check. It implies that during site restructuring incoming links can create confusion, where the these links gets diverted to non-existing resources. Thus when the links points towards net resources that no longer exists it results into broken links.

In order to rank higher in search engine, the URL needs to be search engine friendly so that the spiders find them easily. For instance you have 100 of different products to offer there would be a single web page that can give access to these products information. As most of the search engines gives weightage to static links and index websites, the site can be made search engine friendly with URL rewriting.

URL rewriting keeps a check on hot linking so that linking to other sites that is being hosted on your server is avoided. In hot linking media objects are used on a website where they insert the content on the web page even if the original resource is at other server. This could lead to waste of the bandwidth on the original server. Such complication can be avoided with URL rewriting.

One of the greatest benefit of this technique is, the outer parties can be avoided from knowing the technology that keeps your site going by a casual look. It can prevent anyone to make out the server based technology that keeps your site functioning.

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