Start unique and drop the “the” – some thoughts on URLs

http://liamnewmarch.co.uk/unique-urls/

by dphnx • 13 years ago

22 25 13 years ago

liamnewmarch.co.uk

maldeh• 13 years ago

That's fair, but is it really so much work to enter three extra keys on a url? That doesn't strike me as a convincing enough reason not to attempt a brand change, if it otherwise makes sense. (Unless there are many frustrated mobile users somewhere who've decided they've put up with long urls far enough!)

Using an article such as "the" in a brand typically indicates a desire to lay stake on a common noun as a proper noun, or at least the definitive instance of the noun. It often doesn't make sense when your brand is obviously a proper noun or otherwise unique already, but I suppose there's plenty enough newspapers having a variant of "Guardian" in their titles to warrant a push to definitive-hood.

Edit: A friend also pointed out that "guardian.com" is already taken by another established organization. I think that trumps my silly grammatical analysis :P

walshemj2• 13 years ago

Well shouldn't it have been the-manchester-guardian.com :-)

Will be interesting to have a look and see how well or not the in house seo/dev team have done the migration

dc24472• 13 years ago

URLS were and I assume still are a massive part of the collective thought process in the Guardian but yeah, if you are GU then the internet will take whatever you say as canonical to be canonical regardless of seo strategy

drdaeman• 13 years ago

I'd note that it seems to be Chrome-specific problem. Firefox, for example, searches for any substring matches, not only prefixes (although they seem to reasonably prefer results that are matching on word boundaries).

simonw• 13 years ago

Handy tip: the Guardian own gu.com - so you can type gu.com to go straight to theguardian.com (they also use it for their URL shortener)

dphnx• 13 years ago

That sir is a very handy tip, especially on mobile where typing’s a premium.

icebraining• 13 years ago

It is? I've only recently started using a mobile device, but with android's drag-to-form-words mechanism, I can you type "guardian" faster than "gu". I don't know about iOS, though.

dc24472• 13 years ago

We[0] have the GU domain because the Guardian was previously Guardian Unlimited.

[0] No longer there but still think of GU very fondly

maxharlow• 13 years ago

Having 'the' at the start is not ideal, but Guardian Glass (who own guardian.com) no doubt wanted a lot of money for it.

In any case, all the cool kids use gu.com

arjie• 13 years ago

This is a result of the inferior auto-complete implementation in Chrome. Firefox does not have this issue.

oron• 13 years ago

This was part of my thinking in http://getstarter.com single key navigation to your favorite web sites, but for some reason it seems not to catch on that well.

lnanek2• 13 years ago

I'm sure the domain without the "the" was taken, so this isn't particularly useful advice for someone moving to the crowded .com TLD.

cocoflunchy• 13 years ago

Indeed - https://www.guardian.com/

highace• 13 years ago

"I don’t think I visit another site beginning with x"

Yeah yeah..!

null_ptr3• 13 years ago

They should've picked guardian.io and used 4em Droid Sans everywhere with lots of coffee mug stock photos.

meowface• 13 years ago

gu.ardi.an

EliRivers• 13 years ago

Are there really people who will decide "I want to read the Guardian now," and then when they find they have to type four or five letters into their browser bar instead of just one, will decide not to bother? It's now too much effort to type four or five keys? (It's possible, I suppose; I am way out of touch and I still don't understand much of what the kids do now - that thing where "Dave is the mayor of some street corner" was a total mystery to me)

stevewillows3• 13 years ago

From a branding perspective, if you're forced to use an underscore for a twitter or instagram name, always put it at the end.

Sad to see the Guardian go to a .com

null_ptr3• 13 years ago

This is superficial and hard to quantify, but .com has a junky feel to it nowadays. Their co.uk sounds more reputable.

na85• 13 years ago

To you, perhaps. To many tech people, perhaps.

But the Guardian is trying to reach more than that audience, and I'm sure there are lots of "Fox-News Americans" who will scorn the .uk and still find .com to be professional. They have a sense that .com is normal, and that other TLDs are inferior.

Start unique and drop the “the” – some thoughts on URLs

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