The urls and the surfers

[eluser]xwero[/eluser]
Adding the title to your url is good for search engine ranks but how useful is it for the surfers? Will a user ever type such a long url?

If i look at my own surfer behavior i wouldn't do it but what are the options?

Do like amazon where the search engine friendly is backed up by an id and the id is the segment that really matters? If people link to the particular page with only the id the search engines would flag the content as duplicate if they already spidered the other url and that means lower ranking.

Use the date to almost get to the wanted page? This wouldn't generate duplicate content but the surfer needs to know the date and make that extra click to get to the content he wants to see.

Something to make it even more complex is when the same content is in multiple languages. Would the surfer need to add the preferred language to the url if the surfer makes the effort to type the title of the content?

All thoughts and comments are welcome.

[eluser]GSV Sleeper Service[/eluser]
in the past I have constructed URLs along the lines of www.domain.com/news/1234/woo-look-at-that-subaquatic-badger - and the only important parts are /news/1234 - 1234 being the ID of the article in question, so someone could change the text/slug part, and the same article would be displayed.

this did raise the possibility of spiders detecting dupes as you said, but as all links were controlled by us, it wasn't really a problem.

the old URLs looked like www.domain.com/files/news.php?db=database_name&section=news&news_id=1234 (yes, I'm serious, the original developer really did think it was a good idea to pass database names around in URLs...)

[eluser]TheFuzzy0ne[/eluser]
I think that in most cases, the length of a URL is irrelevant. I never find myself typing in long URLs, as if the site is deigned well enough, everything is either linked to, or can be searched for. I'm sure I'm one in a small minority, but I am lazy when it comes to typing URLS, and if I am unsure of the spelling of the base URL, I simply Google it.

Sometimes I end up on a page that's not English, but often it's just a case of changing 2 letters in the URL from say "fr" to "en", and the job's done. If I need a page I've already been to, I can either start typing the URL into the address bar and let auto-complete do it's thing, or I have bookmarks. I think that if you have different lingual versions of the same site, having them each in their own subdomain can prove useful - even if it is the same site.

To my knowledge, the only people who need to type long URLs, would be people who use text-based browsers such as Lynx, but I don't think there are too many people who use it when given a choice.

I live by the philosophy of: "You can please the majority, but you can't please everyone".

I hope this helps, and sorry if I misunderstood the question.

[eluser]xwero[/eluser]
@GSV Sleeper service : true it's not because some people only link with the essential part of the url you can't redirect.

@Thefuzzyone : it's not really a question. It's more a post to poll how others think about their url structure for users and at the same time make them search engine friendly. I'm in the same group as you. I'm not going to type long urls. Most of the times i do a search and for example on lifehacker.com you can just do your searches using the url by the easy to remember url lifehacker.com/search/anything you want to add here. I think this is more userfriendly than google.com/search?q=anything you want here.

About the content in multiple languages lets say the title for the English content is car and for the Dutch content auto but there is in English also a post named auto with other content are you going to force the surfers to type site.com/en/auto and site.com/nl/auto or do you make it possible to type site.com/auto and show a the two pagelinks. But if there are no same title pages like site.com/car you go to the correct page.

[eluser]TheFuzzy0ne[/eluser]
I think that having the user type a country code is the best idea. There are too many languages that share words, even though they are not the same language. I think that changing two letters is easier than waiting for a page to load, and then reading the page to find the link, only to have to click on it and wait some more. I know that would would be my preference anyway.

[eluser]xwero[/eluser]
How would you handle the same titles for one language? Show the first, show the last entry? If you hand over a cms or a blog you have no control over the urls that are based on user input.

I think changing the languages but leaving the title in English isn't good. site.com/nl/car should redirect to site.com/nl/auto. But how do you make sure the car content is the same as the auto content if there are several car entries.

I wonder if cms and blog applications are prepared for these scenarios ?

[eluser]TheFuzzy0ne[/eluser]
You're right. Why should our foreign counterparts have to type in English? I think that some kind of dynamic routing system would work. That way you could setup aliases, much like the routes.php file, but in the database.

My question is, would the content be the same across multiple languages? For example, if you are running a site aimed at multiple nationalities, would you have each English page translated, or would each nationality have it's own content written by native authors?

I guess it depends very much on the type of site you're running. No-one is going to take the time to write a blog in 10 different languages, for example. Generally, a page of content is translated, but it uses the same template. This is where the aliases would come in useful. By doing this, you shouldn't "need" to use a language parameter in the URL. Although it would be worth while supporting it. If a user gets an english page, and wants a Czech page, they can just change the "en" to "cz" and hit enter. They would then be physically redirected to the right page (which is the same template, but generated with different content), via the alias you've set up. The alias manager would be much like a sub-controller. Everything passed to any controller would be routed through it to see if a redirect is necessary. If you are using CI, this could probably extend the main controller class.

This beggars the question, is all of this really necessary? English is the world's second language. Granted, not everyone knows it, but the majority of people with access to the Internet do understand quite a bit, as they generally learn it at school.

Do you have any kind of site in particular in mind? IMHO, the URL is irrelevant for the reasons I mentioned in my first post, and a user should not need to type anything other than the URL if the site is designed well enough. As for bookmarks, if the page title is generated dynamically, this is usually the information stored within a browser, and should help with regards to bookmarking. Don't get me wrong, you have pointed out a potential flaw with URLs, but as I always say, you can please the majority but you can't please everyone (no matter how hard you try).

Another thing to bear in mind, is that when you go to another country and try to find your way around, any sign posts you may find are not translated into every other language - yet people still manage to find their way around. I know it sounds irrelevant, but I think it's a pretty close equivalent. It's the content of the page that matters, not the name of it.

I hope this gives you something to think about (if you haven't fallen asleep whilst reading it).

[eluser]xwero[/eluser]
I guess you don't come from a multiple language country I'm from Belgium and here are three official languages: Dutch, French and German and there are many clients who request multiple language sites. So it's not always a multi countries issue. If everyone who accessed the site read the same language it would be much easier but that is not always the case, certainly not in some countries of Europe.

By not translating content on your site you lose some of the public you want to reach. There are a lot of people who cling on to their own language and refuse to search in other languages including English. Have you ever stood still and think about the great ideas you miss on because you can't read a certain language? As a webdeveloper you have to think about how the client can reach the broadest public for his content. And urls really matter because they are the links for the outside world.

[eluser]Derek Allard[/eluser]
Wow, this thread has grown quickly I confess I haven't read the full thing, but wanted to show off something EE does

Have your cake:
http://www.derekallard.com/blog/post/exp...deignited/

And eat it to!
http://www.derekallard.com/blog/post/250

Also, since you mentioned multi-lang specifically, there are probably a half dozen different methods of generating multi-language sites in EE, but I haven't played much with any of them.

[eluser]TheFuzzy0ne[/eluser]
I love being a nerd!!