For instance a dynamic URL such as http://www.example-site.com/cgi-bin/gen.pl?id=554&view=basic might show a particular product in your catalogue, but this URL gives no clue as to what it might be. The point I want to make here is that while verbose URLs follow a syntax and will work no matter how clumsy they are to our eyes, they are not intuitive- we can't readily translate them, and nor can search engines.

The product "id" portion of the URL will prevent Google looking any further (its too generic), so even if it read "...?id=hammers..." it wouldn't get looked at- Google won't look at session IDs for the same reason.

You might have a great site, with loads of high-demand products, but if the URL is complex you are missing out on that extra-optimisation opportunity. Searchers are getting better at understanding site structures, so they may just go to your domain e.g. http://www.example-site.com and tag on /products/hammers to get to the page they want. It can also be quicker than going through the defined user path. Plus, if your "hammers" page has the static URL http://www.example-site.com/products/hammers its going to get indexed better.

The dynamic URL is a symptom of coding purely for machines. This convention means that they are not easily memorable and they can also give up more information than you should be comfortable with. For example, when attacking a website a hacker will usually have a go at URL manipulation to begin enumerating a system. Information such as such as session ID's, or SQL strings should therefore be hidden.

Renaming, or rather "rewriting", your dynamic URLs can be achieved by tweaking the Server Application Programming Interface (SAPI). A SAPI is a module that plugs-in to server applications such as APACHE (Linux) or IIS (Windows). Its probably best left to developers, but understanding how and why URL rewriting works is important for anyone responsible for site management- I will cover this later in "URL Rewriting: Part Two: How?"