URL's - long or short?

There’s a bit of a trend at the moment for long URL’s, with a good example being www.wheredoesitallcomefrom.com, the corporate site of the Seeboard energy company. It would be easy to say that this trend is because all the short and obvious URL’s have already been taken and this forces organisations to look elsewhere.

I think it might represent a more fundamental shift in users and marketer’s attitudes to internet use. Previously it was assumed that the best URL’s were the shortest ones, for example www.jobs.com. These short URL’s were a lowest common denominator, which even the most inexperienced internet user could remember and type.

The belief that shortest was best was misplaced as it was founded on the principle that normal, intelligent people were rendered helpless when faced with the prospect of typing more than a few letters into an internet browser. This shortest principle also ignores the fact that users frequently bookmark sites and don’t have to retype URL’s.

Things have changed though and now the average internet user is now more experienced and confident on the internet and this lowest common denominator principle no longer applies. This has interesting implications for the recruitment industry.

More experienced internet users are more likely to engage in sophisticated and interactive features online. www.wheredoesitallcomefrom.com provides some good examples of this, effectively using interactive games in order to express the benefits of using Seeboard as an energy supplier.

If the use of longer URL’s becomes accepted then recruiters will be able to start using URL’s on advertising as part of the branding and recruitment process; the possibilities are endless, with www.thebestgraduatejobsinmarketing.com and www.greatnewjobsinbristol.com being possible examples. In fact Integris have already used the URL www.22k-start-at-integris.co.uk