At CNET News' Technically Incorrect site, Chris Matyszczyk is blogging on the question of whether URLs matter anymore. He uses a recent conversation with someone regarding the choice of domain name to bring up an interesting point:
This is something that has come up in previous posts on our blogs, most notably in one titled "The URL is dead...LONG LIVE SEARCH!" that was written by Chris Baggott over a year ago.
It's interesting to take a look back over the past decade to see how things have evolved. Back in the days when AOL still was the entry point for net access for a large chunk of people, businesses marketed themselves in commercials with phrases like "AOL keyword blah".
During the rise of the dot-com bubble, securing coveted domain names became a high priority, with astronomical sums being spent to acquire domain names based on frequently used nouns.
In the late 90s, a company called RealNames arrived on the scene, providing a more human friendly layer on top of the Domain Name System that's used in locating the servers for URLs. It got support for its technology included with Internet Explorer, and it scored some deals with some big name (at the time) search engines. Nonetheless, the company never gained mainstream credibility. In a 2001 critique of the service, Gartner analyst Whit Andrews wrote:
The RealNames problem is simple: DNS, despite its well-known weaknesses, is a technically workable--and reasonably comprehensible--method of naming Internet resources. The DNS method tends to falter when faced with the complexity and variety of consumers' interests--and with the fact that human language allows for terms that aren't specific enough to provide useful returns. Nonetheless, it remains entirely adequate for most Internet users' purposes--especially when combined with the many search engines and indexes that are available.
By 2002, the system had shut down. A paper written by Ben Edelman in 2002 presented quantitative analysis that argued Google was a much better locator of information than both DNS guesses and RealNames. The article also presaged the rise of paid search placement ads.
Organic search has become the way people figure out what's out there. It succeeded where RealNames failed because there is no sole gatekeeper of linkage between keyword and search result. Granted, Google is the 800 lb gorilla in this space, but there are alternatives.
But even within Google, the incentive is to return search results that will help its users find what they are looking for. It relies on its algorithms and tunes them to make sure that the job is being done right.
That means you don't have to write a check to Google to get the rank you want. Instead you invest your resources in creating an online presence that is relevant to your potential customers. A network of Compendium blogs is a good way to get there.
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.
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.
This is something that has come up in previous posts on our blogs, most notably in one titled "The URL is dead...LONG LIVE SEARCH!" that was written by Chris Baggott over a year ago.
It's interesting to take a look back over the past decade to see how things have evolved. Back in the days when AOL still was the entry point for net access for a large chunk of people, businesses marketed themselves in commercials with phrases like "AOL keyword blah".
During the rise of the dot-com bubble, securing coveted domain names became a high priority, with astronomical sums being spent to acquire domain names based on frequently used nouns.
In the late 90s, a company called RealNames arrived on the scene, providing a more human friendly layer on top of the Domain Name System that's used in locating the servers for URLs. It got support for its technology included with Internet Explorer, and it scored some deals with some big name (at the time) search engines. Nonetheless, the company never gained mainstream credibility. In a 2001 critique of the service, Gartner analyst Whit Andrews wrote:
The RealNames problem is simple: DNS, despite its well-known weaknesses, is a technically workable--and reasonably comprehensible--method of naming Internet resources. The DNS method tends to falter when faced with the complexity and variety of consumers' interests--and with the fact that human language allows for terms that aren't specific enough to provide useful returns. Nonetheless, it remains entirely adequate for most Internet users' purposes--especially when combined with the many search engines and indexes that are available.
By 2002, the system had shut down. A paper written by Ben Edelman in 2002 presented quantitative analysis that argued Google was a much better locator of information than both DNS guesses and RealNames. The article also presaged the rise of paid search placement ads.
Organic search has become the way people figure out what's out there. It succeeded where RealNames failed because there is no sole gatekeeper of linkage between keyword and search result. Granted, Google is the 800 lb gorilla in this space, but there are alternatives.
But even within Google, the incentive is to return search results that will help its users find what they are looking for. It relies on its algorithms and tunes them to make sure that the job is being done right.
That means you don't have to write a check to Google to get the rank you want. Instead you invest your resources in creating an online presence that is relevant to your potential customers. A network of Compendium blogs is a good way to get there.
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