Does URL structure/format matter for Google or other search engines?

I'm going to put my "old man" hat on and answer this question with a story: I once had a detailed back and forth about URL structure with a self-appointed SEO expert in the travel industry. He told me that URL structure was crucial to ranking success, that a malformed or poorly optimized URL couldn't rank, that we needed to completely restructure an existing website because the current URL structure was sub-optimal, etc. As I'm sure everyone knows, the travel industry is extraordinarily competitive. Ranking for a term like "best places to honeymoon" or "cheap hotels in Mexico" is highly valuable, so big companies spend big money to rank. If URL structure is as crucial as some people claim, than it would stand to reason that every high-ranking travel site would have excellent URL structure. Right? Here are some of the top ranking sites for the term "cheap hotels in Mexico", and  NONE of them have what anyone would consider optimal URL structure: http://www.hotels.com/de830421-qu0/cheap-hotels-mexico-city-mexico/ - What's with the de830421 business in the URL? Good luck remembering THAT link, right? http://www.expedia.com/Mexico-City-Hotels.d178285.Travel-Guide-Hotels - Same question - what's with the d178285? http://www.tripadvisor.com/HotelsList-Mexico_City-Cheap-Hotels-zfp10379.html - Is "zfp10379" a search term I'm not familiar with? http://www.kayak.com/Mexico-City-Hotels.53588.hotel.ksp - Is 53588 another long tail keyword? I can do this all day, in any vertical. Show me a competitive search term, and I'll show you a high-ranking site with a less than optimal URL. While the URLs listed above aren't bad (most of them have the keywords "cheap" , "hotels", and "mexico" in them), none of them are perfect...all of them have weird data strings, and each of them has other keywords that reduce the "density" of the target search term. To answer your question, perfect URL structure isn't nearly as important as some people claim. While it's definitely not a bad idea to optimize URLs - and it's important to have a URL with keywords - it's not at all essential. My advice: If it's easy to include keywords in your URL, you should do that. If it's hard to include keywords, you should weigh the pros and cons of investing in a new structure. Don't worry about what order keywords are in. It's just not that important. Don't worry if you have weird strings of data/text mixed in with your keyword. Focus on content, usability, branding, etc. That's where you're make big $$$ There are 1,000 ranking signals. URL structure is one of them, which means there are 999 other things to think about.

Yes, they care.  Words in the url will generally be matched against the query and can affect the final page ranking.  They may or may not ignore text after a '?' character. For a good public example, see how eBay names it's item pages.  They are all named something like /itm/Long-String-Of-Text-From-The-Item-Title/12345678, but you get to the exact same page with /itm/12345678 or /itm/Whatever/12345678.  The text is only there so that search engines will pick it up.

While static URLs might have a slight advantage in terms of clickthrough rates because users can easily read the urls, the decision to use database-driven websites does not imply a significant disadvantage in terms of indexing and ranking according to Google. Rand of SEO Moz has written a detailed post about this issue and I quote Pros of Dynamic URLs Umm... they're usually longer? Google (1 of the 4 major search engines) says they can effectively crawl and index them Cons of Dynamic URLs Lower click-through rate in the search results, in emails, and on forums/blogs where they're cut and pasted A greater chance of cutting off the end of the URL, resulting in a 404 or other error when copying/pasting Lower keyword relevance and keyword prominence Nearly impossible to write down manually and share on a business card or read over the phone to a person Challenging (if not impossible) to manually remember Does not typically create an accurate expectation of what the user will see prior to reaching the page Not usable in branding or print campaigns Won't typically carry optimized anchor text when used as the link text (which happens frequently due to copying & pasting) Pros of Static URLs (mostly the opposites of the above) Higher click-through rates in the SERPs, emails, web pages, etc. Higher keyword prominence and relevancy Easier to copy, paste and share on or offline Easy to remember and thus, usable in branding and offline media Creates an accurate expectation from users of what they're about to see on the page Can be made to contain good anchor text to help the page rank higher when linked-to directly in URL format All 4 of the major search engines (and plenty of minor engines) generally handle static URLs more easily than dynamic ones, particularly if there are multiple parameters Cons of Statics URLs You might mess up the rewriting process, in which case your users and search engines will struggle to find content properly on your site. So - bottom line - dynamic URLs don't afford you the same opportunity for search engine rankings, usability or portability that rewritten, keyword-optimized URLs do. Just because one of the engines doesn't have trouble crawling them doesn't mean it's any less critical to continue optimizing this element of a site's structure.