The Disadvantages of URLs
- URLs have several disadvantages.http, www, icon, web, website image by creative from Fotolia.com
With all the advancements in the Internet age, it is surprising that there are still so many long URLs full of letters, numbers and hyphens. There are several disadvantages to URLs. Sometimes the best URLs for drawing visitors to your website are unavailable. Other times, the URLs do not enable SEO optimization. Still other times, hackers try to mimic your URL by making their own URLs deceptively similar. - It is easy to accidentally type the wrong URL, even if it is something that you type in every day. Most of the time, a mistyped URL will send you to a "This Page Does Not Exist" tab, or else you will be redirected to the intended site. However, sometimes scammers and hackers try to take advantage of mistyped URLs. For example, F-Secure has found a virus that can infect your computer when you accidentally mistype the word Google into your browser.
- If you've ever launched your own business, you know that it can be hard to find the perfect domain name and URL. It needs to be something that your customers can remember and it should represent your business, and it is disappointing when you find out that somebody already owns your desired URL. It is even more disappointing when that site is dedicated to a pet hamster and has not been updated in six years. Your best bet when your desired URL name is unavailable is to purchase a .net or a .org domain name and to hope your customers remember which website is yours.
- On the other hand, if you are already running a successful business, other people might try to pose as you with URLs that are very similar to yours. To combat this, you could try to purchase every .net, .info, .biz that otherwise matches your URL. You could also buy all of the URLs that contain "the" and any other words that user may type into the browser expecting to see your website. Additionally, you could buy the domain names of misspelled URLs. Unfortunately, this can easily cost over a hundred dollars when your domain name introductory prices expire.
- Search engine optimization is important for any website. The higher your website appears in a search, the more traffic you receive. "Clean" URLs are short and simple. They contain keywords right in the URL and they can be easily typed into a web browser. "Dirty" URLs have dozens, sometimes hundreds of characters -- colons, question marks and back slashes -- and they are nearly impossible to remember. Services like Tiny URL can prevent these long-winded URLs, but they remove the URL keyword and can ultimately affect search engine placement.
- How many times have you clicked on a seemingly innocuous link only to find a site that is way different than your intended target? Unfortunately, some people intentionally mislead others with the name of the URL. For example, if you search for hockey scores, you may find a URL somewhere that claims to be NHL highlights, but actually contains nothing but prescription drug advertisements.
