5 ms·

Claiming that the urchin URL parameters are "one of the malicious effects of URL shortening" is confusing cause and effect. Urchin's software dates from at leas

by seldo 15y ago

Claiming that the urchin URL parameters are "one of the malicious effects of URL shortening" is confusing cause and effect. Urchin's software dates from at least 2003, and was already massively distributed by Google in 2005, while URL shortening did not catch on in any meaningful way until the advent of Twitter, which was not founded until 2006. The very long URLs created by Urchin and other web analytics was one of the problems that URL shorteners were created to solve. Whether short URLs have a "malicious" effect is a topic for a different discussion, but whatever the effects of URL shortening, Urchin parameters are not among them. Urchin parameters certainly do make it harder to detect duplicate URLs, which would be pinboard's primary problem with them. However, so lots of other URL parameters like sessions, landing page refs, etc.. Urchin's are just the most common ones. [Disclosure: I work for awe.sm, which provides social media analytics using, amongst other methods, short URLs]

jshen 15y ago
I think the argument is that url shorteners hide this types of URLS which has led to them being used more often since they fly under peoples radars. Sounds reasonable to me.
- seldo 15y ago
  It doesn't sound reasonable to me, and for obvious reasons I spend quite a lot of time thinking about URLs and how people interact with them. The truth is that outside of nerd circles most people don't even understand URLs, far less care whether they have extra parameters in them. Major browsers are considering getting rid of the URL bar entirely. The tidiness of URLs is therefore of almost zero concern to major online publishers, but accurate analytics is, which is why UTM tracking is so popular.
  - tednaleid 15y ago
    It's not just tidiness. There's also a valid privacy concern. These parameters have nothing to do with serving the content the user wants and are only there to track users and behavior and are metadata about the real url that's attached like a parasite. I understand the value for content providers, but I think stripping them off for archival purposes is appropriate.
    - seldo 15y ago
      I do too! It's absolutely the right behaviour for a service like pinboard, and it's even the right behaviour from Google's perspective, since any clicks on that link will be from pinboard, and not whatever the original source was listed in the UTM parameters.
    - vladd 15y ago
      Exactly these parameters are the ones helping webmasters identify what the user wants. Knowing what pages are popular, where the users come from and what acquisition channels can you use and at what costs in order to bring eye-balls to your content influence directly what content area is going to be invested into and expanded by the content providers, which makes them do exactly what the user wants. In a world without analytics you have tons of crappy content written or created at the whip of an executive who thinks she's good at guessing market demand (and nobody in the company can prove her wrong scientifically speaking before the job is done). That content will prove to be a failure when it's launched in let's say 9 out of 10 cases, which means 9 bankrupt projects, 10 times less interesting content on the web at 10 times higher costs of production, which in turn leads to less competition, higher prices (paywalls anyone?), reduced rate of learning/innovation etc. I have a balanced view on the issue and I know the pros and cons of each side, including the privacy issues involved for everyone when surfing the web. But I'm sad when I see remarks as "I hope your product dies" or when someone chooses to blatantly represent just one side of the story.
      - nsfmc 15y ago
        Nobody is suggesting we abolish analytics as a practice, but it's misrepresenting the issues to suggest that content providers will die a sad death if they lose out on whatever benefits those querystring params provide. Content providers already have feedburner for rss metrics (also, now by google) not to mention google analytics (nee urchintracker) and good ol' fashioned server access logs (which you can analyze with urchin proper (or mint, or what have you)). I can see from a gut-reaction standpoint how you could write what you did, but aside from gawker (who notoriously uses analytics, c.f.[1]), how many legitimate content providers use analytics as anything other than a rough barometer for trends? The problems you describe are problematic for certain types of tabloid publishers (drudge report, ny post, etc.), but they are hardly addressed by a handful of querystring parameters. [1] http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/10/18/101018fa_fact_mcgrath http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/10/18/101018fa_fact_...
idlewords 15y ago
I'm not arguing that URL shorteners came first, but rather that their widespread use is what has enabled this kind of URL crapification to become so pervasive. [Disclosure: I hope your entire product category dies]
- seldo 15y ago
  Wow. That's a little rude. I'm arguing that URL shorteners have had nothing to do with the popularity of Google Analytics, which is the source of urchin parameters. The dominance of Google and the massive profit incentive around accurately tracking adwords and adsense is what's driving that. Consumers don't care what their URLs look like, so it doesn't matter whether URL shorteners obfuscate them. I recognize that shortened URLs are troublesome for a bookmarking service, but they are hardly insurmountable. I'm not sure I understand why you'd have so much hate for us. (And for the record, URL shortening is not our primary product)
  - SoftwareMaven 15y ago
    What he's saying is that, because url shorteners hide the Urchin crap, it has allowed it to become more pervasive, since most people don't see the Urchin crap until it's hidden far to the right in the browser.
    - mattmcknight 15y ago
      Couldn't you say the same thing about an ordinary hyperlink on a page? I see the text of the link and even less of the URL than you see in the address bar in the 64 char preview at the bottom of the browser when I hover. It's only a very small percentage of the population that copies the destination URL and strips out unnecessary query parameters. The URL shorteners just an inferior version of regular anchor tags...
  - sbierwagen 15y ago
    Shortened URLs are also troublesome for anyone who likes clicking on links, due to the propensity for URL shorteners to run out of money and die, breaking tens of thousands of links.
jamesaguilar 15y ago
Also, if stripping the utm parameters are supposedly going to make it easier to dedup urls, why not just make the deduping logic strip them before running? So that argument is not fully thought out either. Of course, that doesn't make the conclusion invalid, it just means that this point cannot rationally be used to support it.
- pavpanchekha 15y ago
  Because it's not just going to compare URLs; he might well index by that column and compare hashes or something. And doesn't want to store two copies of each URL - decrapified and normal.

by seldo 15y ago

jshen 15y ago

I think the argument is that url shorteners hide this types of URLS which has led to them being used more often since they fly under peoples radars. Sounds reasonable to me.

seldo 15y ago
It doesn't sound reasonable to me, and for obvious reasons I spend quite a lot of time thinking about URLs and how people interact with them. The truth is that outside of nerd circles most people don't even understand URLs, far less care whether they have extra parameters in them. Major browsers are considering getting rid of the URL bar entirely. The tidiness of URLs is therefore of almost zero concern to major online publishers, but accurate analytics is, which is why UTM tracking is so popular.
- tednaleid 15y ago
  It's not just tidiness. There's also a valid privacy concern. These parameters have nothing to do with serving the content the user wants and are only there to track users and behavior and are metadata about the real url that's attached like a parasite. I understand the value for content providers, but I think stripping them off for archival purposes is appropriate.
  - seldo 15y ago
    I do too! It's absolutely the right behaviour for a service like pinboard, and it's even the right behaviour from Google's perspective, since any clicks on that link will be from pinboard, and not whatever the original source was listed in the UTM parameters.
  - vladd 15y ago
    Exactly these parameters are the ones helping webmasters identify what the user wants. Knowing what pages are popular, where the users come from and what acquisition channels can you use and at what costs in order to bring eye-balls to your content influence directly what content area is going to be invested into and expanded by the content providers, which makes them do exactly what the user wants. In a world without analytics you have tons of crappy content written or created at the whip of an executive who thinks she's good at guessing market demand (and nobody in the company can prove her wrong scientifically speaking before the job is done). That content will prove to be a failure when it's launched in let's say 9 out of 10 cases, which means 9 bankrupt projects, 10 times less interesting content on the web at 10 times higher costs of production, which in turn leads to less competition, higher prices (paywalls anyone?), reduced rate of learning/innovation etc. I have a balanced view on the issue and I know the pros and cons of each side, including the privacy issues involved for everyone when surfing the web. But I'm sad when I see remarks as "I hope your product dies" or when someone chooses to blatantly represent just one side of the story.
    - nsfmc 15y ago
      Nobody is suggesting we abolish analytics as a practice, but it's misrepresenting the issues to suggest that content providers will die a sad death if they lose out on whatever benefits those querystring params provide. Content providers already have feedburner for rss metrics (also, now by google) not to mention google analytics (nee urchintracker) and good ol' fashioned server access logs (which you can analyze with urchin proper (or mint, or what have you)). I can see from a gut-reaction standpoint how you could write what you did, but aside from gawker (who notoriously uses analytics, c.f.[1]), how many legitimate content providers use analytics as anything other than a rough barometer for trends? The problems you describe are problematic for certain types of tabloid publishers (drudge report, ny post, etc.), but they are hardly addressed by a handful of querystring parameters. [1] http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/10/18/101018fa_fact_mcgrath http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/10/18/101018fa_fact_...

idlewords 15y ago

I'm not arguing that URL shorteners came first, but rather that their widespread use is what has enabled this kind of URL crapification to become so pervasive. [Disclosure: I hope your entire product category dies]

seldo 15y ago
Wow. That's a little rude. I'm arguing that URL shorteners have had nothing to do with the popularity of Google Analytics, which is the source of urchin parameters. The dominance of Google and the massive profit incentive around accurately tracking adwords and adsense is what's driving that. Consumers don't care what their URLs look like, so it doesn't matter whether URL shorteners obfuscate them. I recognize that shortened URLs are troublesome for a bookmarking service, but they are hardly insurmountable. I'm not sure I understand why you'd have so much hate for us. (And for the record, URL shortening is not our primary product)
- SoftwareMaven 15y ago
  What he's saying is that, because url shorteners hide the Urchin crap, it has allowed it to become more pervasive, since most people don't see the Urchin crap until it's hidden far to the right in the browser.
  - mattmcknight 15y ago
    Couldn't you say the same thing about an ordinary hyperlink on a page? I see the text of the link and even less of the URL than you see in the address bar in the 64 char preview at the bottom of the browser when I hover. It's only a very small percentage of the population that copies the destination URL and strips out unnecessary query parameters. The URL shorteners just an inferior version of regular anchor tags...
- sbierwagen 15y ago
  Shortened URLs are also troublesome for anyone who likes clicking on links, due to the propensity for URL shorteners to run out of money and die, breaking tens of thousands of links.

jamesaguilar 15y ago

Also, if stripping the utm parameters are supposedly going to make it easier to dedup urls, why not just make the deduping logic strip them before running? So that argument is not fully thought out either. Of course, that doesn't make the conclusion invalid, it just means that this point cannot rationally be used to support it.

pavpanchekha 15y ago
Because it's not just going to compare URLs; he might well index by that column and compare hashes or something. And doesn't want to store two copies of each URL - decrapified and normal.