How important is rewriting query string URLs for SEO?

[timestandstill]

Is the first really better than the second for SEO?

Code:

/page/1234.html

Code:

/page.php?id=1234

It seems silly that Google would still have problems with query strings in this day and age, but many people say it's better to rewrite them. Opinions?

[AceInfinity]

It's actually really important. Google doesn't have issues with it at all, it only improves SEO because of the way google indexes individual pages. If you have keywords in your URL, thats a huge positive. So thats another reason why they should be re-written.

If google finds duplicate content on several pages, it will only index one of the pages, which is why I tell everyone that having unique content for each page is important for SEO. Plus if google finds the same content on another page, it will make the page invisible to the search engine's result pages.

Query string pages also make the url longer so that the keyword when for google becomes insignificant. For example, if you have a page.

index.html or index.htm it's a lot different than index.php?id=24 where there is no unique keyword. Doing it the first way adds an extra keyword to virtually every page

make a rule code for a url rewrite and get rid of all of them. Because the truth is as you've asked, the first option is more SEO friendly.

[rakesh0001]

Its very much important as per Google's algorithm.

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[WhiteFlame]

I would say its very important too. In fact I had to do this recently since I heard google now highly ranks the URL in the search results. It didn't boost my home page but it did boost the other pages like contact and about which is nice beacuse it pushes your competitors even further and makes you say the top 5 results.