Do URLs matter anymore?
A little while ago, I was working with a client who wanted to change his very large company's brand name.
His greatest concern was that the new name should make for a simple URL.
I wondered whether it wasn't more important that the brand name should be memorable. Isn't that where it all starts? And ends?
I was reminded of this conversation Tuesday when I arrived in Austin, Texas. By chance and a glass of viognier, I encountered a photographer who wanted her work to enjoy a wider audience. She gave me her card, headlined by her URL: CourtneyChavanell.com. Which, given that Courtney Chavanell was her name, appeared to be appropriate.
(Credit:
CC ChrisDlugosz/Flickr)
However, I secretly wanted to tell her to change her name like actors do- because Chavanell is tough to remember. She said the key to her work was optimism, so I wanted to suggest that she change her professional name to Courtney Optimist. Everyone would remember that, URL or not.
There was a time when people thought URLs were the key to getting hordes to throng your site. Make it short, have one of the most important keywords--sex, free, go, eat, my, and porn being examples--and your fortune was made.
People still try to trade the most simple URLs for hopeful hundreds of thousands. They will still line up in the hope of getting a vanity URL from Facebook.
But don't most people simply go to the little search box, type in the name of what they're looking for, and search?
If it's something they want to go back to, they'll bookmark it. But they won't remember what the URL is. For the simple reason that they don't need to. The Bingoogle fraternity does it for them.
Indeed, in Japan, a country so often so clever about these things, the trend in advertising is not for companies to slap their URLs three feet high in the bottom right of the ad--it's to have search boxes with suggested search terms.
Every time I see a URL in an ad that tell you to go to COMPANY NAME/special offer or some such, I wonder if there's anyone who would ever do such a thing.
Perhaps there are those generic words that people absent-mindedly type, perhaps just out of boredom. I don't know, URLs like kitchen.com. Or music.com. But could this still be a significant number?
How many people really do bother to type URLs these days?
Just wondering.
Chris Matyszczyk is an award-winning creative director who advises major corporations on content creation and marketing. He brings an irreverent, sarcastic, and sometimes ironic voice to the tech world. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. 
With firefox, you just pull down the history right in the address box, and you get the ones most recently used. That's something I wish was in Chrome.
What is "such a stupid thing" exactly? Yes names are not confined, uh, bookmarks work if you use the same machine or store them online, and I agree that we need trust.
I once knew a Chef who didn't like fancy names for his food, he also wanted the foods natural taste to come through. There was something profound and harmonic about both of those ways that he knew food.
From the moment someone perceives the site that you would like them to remember to the moment they need to recall any part of it to find your online presence there is a time when a tiny part of what they perceived is only in thier brain. It is then important to ease that transition by having easily remembered keywords and or web address.
The original article on url's was refreshing to me. I always thought it smarmy how people traded up url's. Now we are entering an age where it is more important to know how to find information than to remember lots of info. Keywords are better than remembering web urls.
I can't brag, though, I can hardly remember a phone number anymore.
Thank you for the post.
Marketing will certainly be more challenging in the future due to oversaturation of media in general. But one way around that, and your post suggests this, is to make SEO a priority so that people find you first!
Once in a while I try URLs, but the above commenter who noted that because there are so many squatters out there, I most often resort to keyword searches instead.
So, yeah, I personally think the name is important. But, does it have to be short? That is less important given that browsers will assist you with the longer names via auto-complete. A good name is a good name. r34q or similar names are not.
Google videoed a load of people in Times Square recently and something like 60% didn't even know what a browser was, let alone understand URLs. I have watched a lot of non-techie people use the web and they perceive the search engine to be the place they use to get everywhere, so type what they want in there before clicking on the results. That's even if they know the URL.
So you might be on to something.
Of course, they'll be those who say it matters in ensuring that you get listed higher in the search engines, so it is still important but now in a different way.
Ian Hendry
CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz
Most people just Google it, search on Yahoo or whatever else.
* Only times URLs are important are outside of the web, such as posters, TV ads, etc.
So, in that sense, if you are going to be advertising outside of these places, having an easily remembered URL is good.
You can of course use tiny URL websites. But since these are almost certainly going to break the web when some of them die off, a standard for "Tiny URL" should be created.
But then this will end up just creating a 2nd layer of DNS, which is even more stupid.
It is a huge mess to be honest. URLs as it is are a mess, thanks to the idiots in control.
The URLs should have been back-to-front. This would have prevented so much of the phishing we see today. (and the whole mess we have seen with sub-domains, sub-sub-domains, etc)
Simple example: myspace.com.profile.2323232.com
For every person you know that knows this isn't really Myspace, there are many times more who have no clue what the dots, slashes and equals mean, they never question it, they just want things that work.
And thanks to the idiots at ICANN, the TLD system will be even more open soon.
Now something could create something as simple as "google.ocm", such a simple typo could cause trouble for millions if it were a phishing site.
Quite simply, a sub-domain is NOT the Most Significant Bit of a URL, and it NEVER EVER should have been thought of in this way. But too late now. Unless ICANN ruin the web and cause others to take over (forcefully), we will be stuck with this horrible mess.
Sorry for the rant, just annoyed at the announcement from ICANN recently over this.
Something I am reminded of every day is how so many people are still trying to figure out how to use a computer, what a mouse is, and how to "browse" the internet. Yea, the vast number of people are still trying to get a handle on the basics. Let's not get too far ahead of ourselves that we begin thinking of dropping such things as URLs. Instead, let's show how the power of the computer is an attraction for everyone and how they can improve our society, our culture, our freedom.
Realizing this just motivates me to get better at touch typing (and longhand writing). It keeps me sharp and alert, even when Google is down, which happens more often than most people seem to remember. Yes, having a good memory is a useful thing as well, so keep training those little gray cells (they might still be useful when you?re at a ripe old age).
So in my opinion there is no need to get lazy just because you can. Mind you, efficiency is something else than laziness. Just don't get too comfortable with one way of using the Web. Keep your options open, so it's easier to switch to new ways of accessing when they arise.
And please, CNet, fix your CMS. It?s giving me flashbacks to the 1990s which I?d rather not have.
The author of the article is correct that search is the whole ballgame nowadays but misses the point in researching and acquiring a domain name - not because it's memorable, brandable or easy to type, but to make more money through search results, sometimes a lot more.
Most of the really good money makers are already taken and often sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars in domain name auctions. It takes considerable research (and lots of luck) to locate a money maker that hasn't already been exploited. It's not uncommon for a very expensive domain name to be profitable in spite of its high cost.
If your URL is also your site/company/event/name or close to it, it reinforces the search term as it's not just some meta-tag on your site.
Hang-on, that reminds me...
Aside from that, though, I usually type the beginnings of URLs into the URL box and let my history fill out the rest. I don't often go searching google for a site I have already been to, because I have a good memory and can normally recall at least part of the URL .. enough to get some hits in my history.
Although I agree that URLs are not AS important as they may have used to be, I don't think they should go anywhere. In fact I bet they would gain traction again if squatting was somehow outlawed. If you could report sites that are registered but just show that generic start page, and have them taken down within 24 hours or something, that would greatly increase the value of URLs.
One thing I definitely thing should go out the window is the standard www. subdomain. They serve no purpose. Sub-domains in general server a purpose, but the www doesn't. Apache, or whatever server software you are using, can easily be configured to handle URLs without www. Most sites that I go to I simply type http://site.com/. Luckily, a lot of sites work like this and will go through. Others dont, such as LinkedIn. If you go to http://linkedin.com/in/personname/ it reverts back to the site's home page.
What if I started a lawn care business called, lets say, Green Grass. I had the name of the company incorporated into my logo, printed on my building, in print ads, and on my trucks. Then I had a URL of www.supercheapurl.com. Am I really going to want to put that in advertisements, or on my trucks, or anywhere? Even if I say on the radio ads "Search for Green Grass on the web!". Someone goes and searches google, and sees the top link with a url of www.supercheapurl.com. Even if the link header looks legit, I'm going to second guess whether I want to A) visit the site, or B) do business with a company who can't understand marketing.
- by myles taylor July 1, 2009 7:30 AM PDT
- For people with simple/personal websites like me and small businesses, URLs definitely matter. Especially with word of mouth. If you're very very unique, it's possible to get a good search spot, but otherwise you need a good, simple URL.
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