4 ms·

Pretty sure SEO is the real reason long urls are such a problem, it's why URLs are long and it's why they're all tagged to hell. There was a time where your si

Pretty sure SEO is the real reason long urls are such a problem, it's why URLs are long and it's why they're all tagged to hell. There was a time where your site would be site.com/product.php?id=x or site.com/product.asp?id=x, now it's: site.com/keyword-keyword/keyword/keyword/product-name?urchin or google analytics crud

hammerdr 15y ago
For a short time there, it was: site.com/dashboard/alerts We should get back to that. There need to be better ways to do SEO than polluting URLs. Slapping this information on a URL is a misuse of the purpose of URLs (permanent locators for a resource on the web. E.g. even if the resource has moved, there is a response code and a way of reaching the new location).
SoftwareMaven 15y ago
There is a middle-ground, which is good and wholesome. site.com/category/page-name.html gives good context for users (those few of us who understand URLs, anyway ;) that site.com/index.php?id=x doesn't without bloating things for SEO purposes.
- andybak 15y ago
  Except of course - you wouldn't really need .html (.php or .anything) on a url...
  - sbierwagen 15y ago
    Seconded. Example: http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI
- rmc 15y ago
  Those sort of URLs are good for discovery aswell. It's easy to navigate and guess other URLs with that.
jarod 15y ago
URLs are long and tagged with parameters for SEM purposes, not SEO. Long URLs that are spidered by Google are usually considered bad from an SEO perspective because they're not "pretty" URLs. There's a lot of incorrect information being passed around on this thread. All the parameters you see specify campaign variables to help marketers track their campaigns. As for privacy, these parameters don't reveal user behavior on a site. It's only when it's connected to Google Analytics that is placed ON the site that the campaign data is then connected to site data. Long URLs have no adverse affect on the user browsing experience and URL shorteners do a great job of hiding them so removing those parameters simply serves to screw over marketing people that have spent time and money crafting their campaigns and gathering valuable data. In regards to making it harder to detect duplicate URLs...really??? It's that hard to strip our everything before parameters?
- Lozzer 15y ago
  No, because you would reasonably requests with different parameters to return different pages.

hammerdr 15y ago

For a short time there, it was: site.com/dashboard/alerts We should get back to that. There need to be better ways to do SEO than polluting URLs. Slapping this information on a URL is a misuse of the purpose of URLs (permanent locators for a resource on the web. E.g. even if the resource has moved, there is a response code and a way of reaching the new location).

SoftwareMaven 15y ago

There is a middle-ground, which is good and wholesome. site.com/category/page-name.html gives good context for users (those few of us who understand URLs, anyway ;) that site.com/index.php?id=x doesn't without bloating things for SEO purposes.

andybak 15y ago
Except of course - you wouldn't really need .html (.php or .anything) on a url...
- sbierwagen 15y ago
  Seconded. Example: http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI
rmc 15y ago
Those sort of URLs are good for discovery aswell. It's easy to navigate and guess other URLs with that.

jarod 15y ago

URLs are long and tagged with parameters for SEM purposes, not SEO. Long URLs that are spidered by Google are usually considered bad from an SEO perspective because they're not "pretty" URLs. There's a lot of incorrect information being passed around on this thread. All the parameters you see specify campaign variables to help marketers track their campaigns. As for privacy, these parameters don't reveal user behavior on a site. It's only when it's connected to Google Analytics that is placed ON the site that the campaign data is then connected to site data. Long URLs have no adverse affect on the user browsing experience and URL shorteners do a great job of hiding them so removing those parameters simply serves to screw over marketing people that have spent time and money crafting their campaigns and gathering valuable data. In regards to making it harder to detect duplicate URLs...really??? It's that hard to strip our everything before parameters?

Lozzer 15y ago
No, because you would reasonably requests with different parameters to return different pages.