Pretty URL's - Anyone used this? Good or bad for SEO?

[sampsonzak]

EDIT: After some replies of people who have installed this module, this seems like a very risky module to install and can entirely mess up your site if uninstalled.

I would consider looking at Amazon, eBay and all the other top players - their links are albeit worse to look at then PrestaShop's. I've decided not to bother with any module which messes around with the internal ID system of PrestaShop. Not worth the hassle, and doesn't look like it provides any advantage. You have been warned!

--- ORIGINAL POST:

 

Hi all, have been thinking since opening my shop I need to get rid of the numbers in the URL of my products as they don't look the best:

e.g.

mydomain.com/category/128-product.html
-->
mydomain.com/category/product.html

&&

mydomain.com/12-category/
-->
mydomain.com/category/

 

I have found the plugin 'Pretty URLs' does this, and it claims it improves SEO, but I am skeptical of this for two reasons:

 

1) I have a fair amount of backlinks on a range of my product pages. I understand it does a 301 redirect, but will my rankings still be less strong than they were?
1a) Does removing the ID numbers benefit SEO at all? Did anyone notice in an increase in their SEO rankings?

2) Does removing the ID slow down the webpage? With an ID at the start, it's easy for PHP to recognize which product from just looking at the number, rather than it having to search a 5-10 character category + 30 character title?

 

Would like to give this a go, but I don't want to risk losing rankings or slow down the page speed, but I have wanted to do this for a while, so I think I will eventually just do it and hope for the best.

 

Anyone have any experience with this sort of module? Really appreciate it if you'd let us know the result/what happened, if anything??

Cheers!

 

EDIT: This module is breaking lots of people stores when uninstalling. I have quoted a reply from someone who had the issue but fixed it, the steps are as follows (use at your own risk):

Quote

Finally we have been able to kill Pretty.URL.... so happy

1. set server to PHP 7.2

2. rename prettyurl folder under modules

3. rename override folder 

4. disable mod-rewrite under seo-url admin menu

5. dispable/rename under override folder this files

    - Dispatcher.php

    - Link.php

6. dispable/rename under override/fronts folder this files

    - SupplierController.php

    - ManufacturerController.php

    - CmsController.php

    - CategoryController.php

7. Modify in MySQL db following settings (do a table search)

    PS_ROUTE_category_rule     {id}-{rewrite}
    PS_ROUTE_supplier_rule     supplier/{id}-{rewrite}
    PS_ROUTE_manufacturer_rule     brand/{id}-{rewrite}
    PS_ROUTE_cms_rule     content/{id}-{rewrite}
    PS_ROUTE_cms_category_rule     content/category/{id}-{rewrite}
    PS_ROUTE_product_rule        {category:/}{id}{-:id_product_attribute}-{rewrite}{-:ean13}.html
    PS_ROUTE_layered_rule     {id}-{rewrite}{/:selected_filters}

8. enable SEO Url mod-rewrite, now your Shop works flawly again with SEO Url & product ID

 

THANKS A LOT TO JWB from forum for his help

Edited May 15, 2020 by sampsonzak (see edit history)

[Tania Vieira C]

Hello,

 

I have exactely the same interest in this module, and i share the same doubts. 

If nobody answer and you decide to try it, share your experience with me please

 

Thank you!

Tania Carreira

[pedepot]

 

No interest for SEO. Amazon, ebay or addons.prestashop use product IDs in their links. yet they are leading companies in their domain.

ID is in the DNA of Prestashop. If you remove it from the URL, you cannot evaluate the impact elsewhere. Change the title of a product will lead to errors with no possibility of link redirection. => Overall more damage on your site then tangible advantages.

Good luck with your business.

 

 

[sampsonzak]

4 hours ago, pedepot said:

 

No interest for SEO. Amazon, ebay or addons.prestashop use product IDs in their links. yet they are leading companies in their domain.

ID is in the DNA of Prestashop. If you remove it from the URL, you cannot evaluate the impact elsewhere. Change the title of a product will lead to errors with no possibility of link redirection. => Overall more damage on your site then tangible advantages.

Good luck with your business.

 

 

Oh wow I didn't even realise that. What you said about Amazon & eBay has removed any doubt of it affecting my seo, other than they both have the ID after the product name in the URL.

 

I think i'll give this plugin a miss then. I wasn't going to get it until I heard some other positive reviews with the problems I thought may happen, but you've sold me on keeping it with normal PS id's.

 

Thanks for that!

[pedepot]

I am glad you changed your mind!

Edited July 12, 2019 by pedepot (see edit history)

[STS]

Purchased this module from FME Modules. Uses a ton of overrides.  They offer installation assistance.  Contacted them for assistance and did not hear back for two weeks.  When they did respond, they simply erased all my other overrides causing two existing modules to fail.  Even with this, they did not allow their Pretty URL module to function with their advanced seo module.  When I tried to disable Pretty URL, entire site went down.  Eventually had to restore from backup.  Did not honor their 30 day warranty.  Do not answer the phone listed on the website.  STAY AWAY FROM THEM.  

[sampsonzak]

5 hours ago, STS said:

Purchased this module from FME Modules. Uses a ton of overrides.  They offer installation assistance.  Contacted them for assistance and did not hear back for two weeks.  When they did respond, they simply erased all my other overrides causing two existing modules to fail.  Even with this, they did not allow their Pretty URL module to function with their advanced seo module.  When I tried to disable Pretty URL, entire site went down.  Eventually had to restore from backup.  Did not honor their 30 day warranty.  Do not answer the phone listed on the website.  STAY AWAY FROM THEM.  

That's not good. Thanks for letting everyone know.

 

I changed my mind on this module as soon as soon as someone mentioned how Amazon/eBay links are formatted. Wouldn't consider using it or anything like it after reading and checking that out.

[SmartPlugs]

I would have A LOT to say about this module but i won't.:D

As STS previously said it : just never uninstall this module! You would loose some overrides ...
And as pedepot said with IDs deletion you will, at least, loose the "canonical redirect" feature...

[sampsonzak]

Well I've added a warning to original post. Definitely seems like this isn't worth the hassle then. I am sure core updates of PrestaShop would also mess up this module/store entirely too by the sounds of it.

[Boonyawat]

Restore it is.... T_T

 

As this COVID-19 situation my physical store has to be closed.... so my website is the only channel I have left and thus I tried to improve my website as much as possible. Came across this pretty URL module and thought it would help. The concept is good right? But after I installed this module. It all went downhill.

- At first, the 301 redirect from ID URL to No-ID URL was not in place. Sure enough their support team helped me with this. But come'on.... this is probably the most important function that has to be working 100%!

- Then other functions on my website behaved strangely.  I asked them to help but they said it was not related to their module...

- **** With this module, you CANNOT change the Rewrite of your product anymore. In the past, you can change the Rewrite (i.e. URL) of your product anytime ant the old URL will redirect to new URL automatically. With this module. you CANNOT. This issue is huge and should have mentioned as a warning.

 

So.... I just fed up and to the restore of my website. My advice is.... Stay away from this module! I don't know about other module but thinking again now... if ID in URL is that bad, Prestashop would have removed it from the first place. ID has its function.

 

And if you think about how we use internet, no one really depends on URL that much these days. Like we don't remember our friends' phone number anymore (or even our family member haha). So I would guess search engine would not weigh the URL that much. Just my thoughts....

[Sviz]

I had same doubts about this module...  but I've tried it... 301 doesn't work! All products with 404 error!

I want to unistall it, do you think that unistall module and replace old rewrite rules on seo and urls settings it's enaugh?
Thank you

Edited December 3, 2020 by Sviz (see edit history)

[SmartPlugs]

Hi Sviz,

Before uninsatalling Pretty Urls you MUST make à backup of your /override directory. Otherwise it might broke your site.
Have a deeper look in the removeOverloadedFiles() methof of pretty url module : it will delete overriden files even if some modules added other methods in them.

 

 

 

 

[Boonyawat]

4 hours ago, Sviz said:

I had sames doubts about this module...  but I've tried it... 301 doesn't work! All products with 404 error!

I want to unistall it, do you think that unistall module and replace old rewrite rules on seo and urls settings it's enaugh?
Thank you

If you have a backup before installing this module, I would recommend doing a restore.

[GrinGEO]

o this is really bad. We tried to uninstall, all the store crashed

I do not understand how it is possible that such modules are sold and adviced by prestashop employes. If you change from one language to the other, it fails as well OOPS page not found. What a bad situation

[JBW]

16 hours ago, GrinGEO said:

o this is really bad. We tried to uninstall, all the store crashed

I had same situation with a customer. Check the /override directory if there are any files containing modules code remaining (e.g. Link.php, Dispatcher.php...) - only remove the modules code if there is other

[GrinGEO]

yeah but we need to fix it. Unfortunately FME modules is responding very slow and they do not understand the issue. It seems their english is not so good. But the problem is Presta employees, they should know more if module work or not before they advice to purchase

[SmartPlugs]

Hi Gringeo,

If you have any backup, try to restore (on PS 1.6) the /override/classes/Link.php and /override/classes/Dispatcher.php files and then delete all the content relative to Pretty Url in those two files. 
If you don't have any backup i would first find all the modules that override those 2 files (in this case they also will have a override/classes/Link.php file, same for the 2nd file). And i would then manually add all the overriden methods founded in the main /override/classes/Link.php file (same for Dispatcher). Or you also can try to uninstall/reinstall all the module you will find (but you  probably will loose their datas too).

Hope it's clear enought...      

 

[GrinGEO]

thanks but this means a crashing shop..... the developer needs to fix this asap. it cannot be that they are doing such mistakes

[GrinGEO]

DO NOT BUY ABSOLUTELY THIS MODULE. It makes crash your server all the time.

You insert one redirect and your server is gone. Support is more than crap. They take days, say they fis it, and they do not resolve anything.

Probably they even do not understand where the issue is... it makes me so angry.

I regret that I startet with Prestashop.... lost hours & hours, backups to fix issue, lose orders...

[GrinGEO]

In my opinions it is a fraudolent way to sell modules that don't work. If you look on website you se 377 good votes... I suppose they are almost fakes. And this should be something PS avoids to do...

[El Patron]

We do not recommend 'any' friendly url module as they all change core.  We have not seen value in this but hey they will sell modules to do anything.

[GrinGEO]

how can we get rid of it? This module is killing almost prestashop

[GrinGEO]

Finally we have been able to kill Pretty.URL.... so happy

1. set server to PHP 7.2

2. rename prettyurl folder under modules

3. rename override folder 

4. disable mod-rewrite under seo-url admin menu

5. dispable/rename under override folder this files

    - Dispatcher.php

    - Link.php

6. dispable/rename under override/fronts folder this files

    - SupplierController.php

    - ManufacturerController.php

    - CmsController.php

    - CategoryController.php

7. Modify in MySQL db following settings (do a table search)

    PS_ROUTE_category_rule     {id}-{rewrite}
    PS_ROUTE_supplier_rule     supplier/{id}-{rewrite}
    PS_ROUTE_manufacturer_rule     brand/{id}-{rewrite}
    PS_ROUTE_cms_rule     content/{id}-{rewrite}
    PS_ROUTE_cms_category_rule     content/category/{id}-{rewrite}
    PS_ROUTE_product_rule        {category:/}{id}{-:id_product_attribute}-{rewrite}{-:ean13}.html
    PS_ROUTE_layered_rule     {id}-{rewrite}{/:selected_filters}

8. enable SEO Url mod-rewrite, now your Shop works flawly again with SEO Url & product ID

 

THANKS A LOT TO JWB from forum for his help

Edited May 15, 2020 by GrinGEO (see edit history)

[GrinGEO]

SORRY GUYS BUT PLEASE AVOID FME MODULES IN ANY WAY

You can't imagine what happened. Togheter with JWB we spent over 2 hours to fix the issue, and those iditos from FME reinstalled the module just to check where was the issue. So we lost again all the work.... Im so angry you can't imagine how I want to treat them....

Edited May 15, 2020 by GrinGEO (see edit history)

[El Patron]

2 hours ago, GrinGEO said:

SORRY GUYS BUT PLEASE AVOID FME MODULES IN ANY WAY

You can't imagine what happened. Togheter with JWB we spent over 2 hours to fix the issue, and those iditos from FME reinstalled the module just to check where was the issue. So we lost again all the work.... Im so angry you can't imagine how I want to treat them....

the topic is about whether they are even useful.  they are not.....not about your experience in implementing, which you should not, well according to experts anyway....but PS and  or PS dev will create whatever the unknowing want. 

[Fabry]

Hey..here my 2cents:

 

yes i use it but not for my choice...i got 2 shops some years ago using this module ( they were built with ps 1.6..and now i have migrated them to ps 1.7 with the same module)

Benefit for seo?: i would say that there is a relative benefit for seo because the url is the last thing that Google check to give you a ranking..i mean that there are other aspects that are more relevant in ranking attribution process

Installation and use: well i've never had problem in installing it or unistalling...but you have to follow the extact procedure. I've never broken any shops with that module...of course you have to disable cache e copy somewhere the original path because you need it if you decide to not use the module anymore!!....no problem at all.

Collateral effect: well here comes the problems....you are forced to use for example only some Blog Modules..other don't work....Some Reviews modules don't work...rooting goes belly up and pages responce stick on 404...but i solved this using a particular module.

The main problem is that the default automatic redirection when you change product name is Kaputt!!..so you need a third party module to manually create a redirection otherwise you get 404 on that products.

Bottom line: if you are bulding a new shop, or you have a production shop  i suggest not to use it...pain does not justify the benefits!!...maybe it makes sense when migrating from  platforms as Woocommerce or Opencart  to Prestashop ( those platform don't use id in url) ..in that case you should be forced to redirect every single no-id url to id-url..so maybe this module can help because it maintain old url structure.....

ciao!

Edited May 15, 2020 by Fabry (see edit history)

[GrinGEO]

Ciao Fabry tutto bene?

I have killed pretty URL again by manual work like described and I closed all access to developer for security reasons. Now I hope I will have a bug free shop withouth all this crashes.

btw. Im not able to manual change under SEO & URL the single page urls... becouse it gives me override folder error. Any advice how to fix?

[El Patron]

I'd love for someone to provide 'any proof' that a friendly friendly url  helps.  

you are better off spending time on how to  implement 'proven' SEO improvements.  

 

[Hút Chân Không Fami]

I think it depends on the purpose of the website

Edited May 24, 2020 by Hút Chân Không Fami (see edit history)

[El Patron]

On 5/24/2020 at 3:45 AM, Hút Chân Không Fami said:

I think it depends on the purpose of the website

well please do elaborate, successful eCommerce is not about guessing

[Zohaib-fk]

Hi All,

Greetings of the day.

I have a module that works fine on version 1.6.x only. I am working on version 1.7 upgrade. I hope the version 1.6 module will be helpful for online stores. (24*7 support available.)

The module helps to loads websites pages faster using some indexing SQL queries in the database.

The friendly URLs have keywords related products, categories, and stores, therefore, it is easy for the search engines to rank and show website URL having keywords in their URL.

Also, the numbers query string in the URL does not look good as compared to the name of the product or category in the URL It does not help visitors to know the ID of product or category using URL pattern, it helps to keep IDs of the data secure.

There are many other benefits of the SEO friendly URLs mentioned on the below forum post.

Addons Marketplace URL => https://addons.prestashop.com/en/seo-natural-search-engine-optimization/40214-seo-friendly-url-pretty-url-without-id-number.html#specifications

Forum URL => 

YouTube Demo Video =>

 

Edited May 29, 2020 by Zohaib-fk
Post Updated (see edit history)