How do sites do that cool url thing

[reportingsjr]

How do sites make it so when you say search for something, instead of something like "http://mysite.com/search/search.php?search=poodles" just make it "http://mysite.com/search/poodles". I am just curios because I find it cool and it might be easier for people, the only site I can think of right now is dictionary.com. If you go there and search look at the URL and you will see what I mean. Its just interesting..

[aspnetguy]

its called url rewriting

[boen_robot]

There is the URL Rewriting Guide from Apache if you're using Apache as your server. As you can guess, this makes it REQURED for you to have control over the server.

[Skemcin]

its also referred to as SES URLs - Search Engine Safe urls.Each scripting language has a way to do it if you do not have access to web server configuration.Basically, you have to commit to a file and folder naming convention and then when a page is called, you program every page url to be processed through a script that goes to a certain "/" and changes it to a "?" and the next "/" after that is changed to a "=". Every other "/" thereafter is replace with a "&" and then ones in between are replaced with "=" as well.You are just replacing the URL string.