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Short URLs: Why and How

sive.rs

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Re: Short URLs: Why and How

#131

Post by kevincox »

fdschoeneman wrote: post #65

I am curious to know more about the implications for SEO.

Probably not great. The understanding is that having keywords in the URL is valuable. This makes sense since these locations are "more expensive" so if the keyword is there it must actually be relevant. So it would make sense to weight keywords found in the following locations in decreasing value:

1. Public Suffix Domain (costs money to register).

2. Subdomain (255 char limit in domains)

3. URL (generally URLs aren't too long)

4. Content (basically free to stuff keywords into).

Re: Short URLs: Why and How

#132

Post by KineticArms »

Tomte wrote: post #7
blowski wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My name is Dan Blows, and my domain is da.nblo.ws, which I thought was the coolest thing ever. Most people are confused or don’t even notice it.

I used to have a mail address along the lines of d@nblows.com But beware, single letter local parts are not universally supported by web sites. Microsoft accounts with those mail addresses are possible (they used to be impossible), but recently I stumbled upon two other web sites that didn't like single letter local parts.

I get told that my email is invalid by some apps, for using a .so domain. Apple was one that would not let me create an apple ID upon buying a new laptop. Eventually, I set up the machine without Apple ID, and opted to create it after the fact via apple.com which accepted it. It makes me wonder if it is intentionally a "Hard no" during system setup, and then a "well okay if you insist" when the user has installed the system without using an Apple ID as a last resort.

Re: Short URLs: Why and How

#133

Post by varun_ch »

Brajeshwar wrote: post #2

I own a 3-letter domain with a 2-letter TLD and still spells my family name. Many of my friends finds it cool when I share links via that domain. The links are indeed easy to remember but it comes at a higher yearly cost of renewal and I had forgotten to renew twice. Luckily, I was able to re-register them (nobody wants it, ;-)). Example https://oin.am/rr/

My favourite personal domain by anyone is Matt Mullenweg's ma.tt, it's so short and really stands out.

But for me, {firstname}.{country}, is enough because it's pretty cool to be the only {firstname} in {country} who decided to register the domain. :)

Re: Short URLs: Why and How

#134

Post by donohoe »

I believe this is a rather naive posts on the subject of URLs and honestly wish it never made it to HN front-page, but seeing as we are here... lets go through the points made and how they conflict with each other...

  "You can remember them"
Well, no. You might remember a few. But you are only going to remember so much. This has a very limited benefit.

  "You can tell someone"
Yeah, but no. I barely tell people a domain. I'll just send them a link on the spot. Again, very limited benefit.

  "They look nicer."
Ok, but not a strong use-case. In general usage the display name of a link does not need to reflect the URL of the link.

  "They remove the middle-man" ... "encourage people to copy and paste" ...
I'm just gonna say this is plain false as a generalization. I've worked on URL sharing in publishing for almost 2 decades (yikes).

It's built on a little bit of truth. On mobile devices all have built in share functions to text and spread based on various apps installed.

Again, very limited impact and effect.

  "They’re enough."
This is my favorite! He talks about unique combinations but this goes against his original point of making them memorable. He should of at least talked about potential dictionary level word combinations... sigh

Re: Short URLs: Why and How

#135

Post by cryptonector »

donohoe wrote: post #134

I believe this is a rather naive posts on the subject of URLs and honestly wish it never made it to HN front-page, but seeing as we are here... lets go through the points made and how they conflict with each other... "You can remember them" Well, no. You might remember a few. But you are only going to remember so much. This has a very limited benefit. "You can tell someone" Yeah, but no. I barely tell people a domain…

URIs are not supposed to be part of the UI/UX, but they unavoidably have leaked and will continue to leak into it. Therefore, making those URIs most likely to leak into the UI/UX be user-friendly is very good advice.

Re: Short URLs: Why and How

#136

Post by bombcar »

mkr-hn wrote: post #114
joshu wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

del.icio.us

Just like old times. https://web.archive.org/web/20080906141421/http://blog.delic... >> "So why did we switch to delicious.com? We’ve seen a zillion different confusions and misspellings of “del.icio.us” over the years (for example, “de.licio.us”, “del.icio.us.com”, and “del.licio.us”), so moving to delicious.com will make it easier for people to find the site and share it with their friends. Of course the old del.ic…

Delicious is one of those words I have a hard time spelling, let alone remembering where the dots would go.

Re: Short URLs: Why and How

#137

Post by cryptonector »

rsync wrote: post #31

I don't like this at all - there is value in a hierarchical naming structure - even if it doesn't represent actual directories . A simple example is: https://www.kozubik.com/ ... where you can find "items": https://www.kozubik.com/items/ ... and one thing inside of "items" is an article on NDS emitters: https://www.kozubik.com/items/nds/ ... which contains supporting multimedia objects: https://www.kozubik.com/items/…

Your hierarchy won't necessarily help others. For URIs that leak into the UI/UX to be short is almost certainly good advice. You can always have them be redirects to the hierarchical names you would prefer.

Don't believe me? Twitter, for example, has short, meaningful URIs for user's status pages, and long, meaningless-to-users URIs for tweets. And in the sea of tweets there is no hierarchy in their naming.

Re: Short URLs: Why and How

#138

Post by cryptonector »

snowwrestler wrote: post #128

URLs generally do not matter to people. Quick, what’s the URL of this discussion? Will you remember it? Does that have any impact on your usage of HN? The vast, vast majority of website sessions start with a click. When people bother to type things in, they type them into search bars (reminder that in most browsers, the “address bar” is also the search bar). So be clear what you want from your URL structure. If you w…

> URLs generally do not matter to people.

Emphasis on generally.

URIs do leak into the UI/UX. It's unavoidable. Purists hate it. But it is a fact of reality.

Re: Short URLs: Why and How

#140

Post by bombcar »

wintermutestwin wrote: post #127

I have found one truly valuable use case for shorter URLs: when a link is included in a printed document. The problem is that every URL shortener replaces the domain, which is IMO a highly dangerous thing.

I have a short enough domain for work that I can just make a simple redirect for short "easy to type" URLs as needed.

I prefer things like example.com/cats when possible vs technically shorter but harder to remember things from bit.ly or whatever.

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