

/#!/ Why is there an exclamation mark in Twitter URLs? - petervandijck

http://twitter.com/#!/petervandijck I understand the hash, but why the exclamation mark? Just ugly implementation detail?
======
CPops
A url hash that starts with an exclamation point is a convention created by
Google to allow Ajax web apps to be crawled by search engines.

[http://code.google.com/web/ajaxcrawling/docs/specification.h...](http://code.google.com/web/ajaxcrawling/docs/specification.html)

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answerly
It indicates to Google (and presumably other crawlers) that the site supports
the AJAX crawling scheme. More here:

[http://code.google.com/web/ajaxcrawling/docs/getting-
started...](http://code.google.com/web/ajaxcrawling/docs/getting-started.html)

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sushi
It's called "shebang" and a discussion was done on SO few weeks back.

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3009380/whats-the-
shebang...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3009380/whats-the-shebang-in-
facebook-and-new-twitter-urls-for)

Basically the purpose of the shebang in this case is to tell Google how to
index pages.

