

Start unique and drop the “the” – some thoughts on URLs - dphnx
http://liamnewmarch.co.uk/unique-urls/

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arjie
This is a result of the inferior auto-complete implementation in Chrome.
Firefox does not have this issue.

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drdaeman
I'd note that it seems to be Chrome-specific problem. Firefox, for example,
searches for any substring matches, not only prefixes (although they seem to
reasonably prefer results that are matching on word boundaries).

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null_ptr
They should've picked guardian.io and used 4em Droid Sans everywhere with lots
of coffee mug stock photos.

~~~
meowface
gu.ardi.an

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simonw
Handy tip: the Guardian own gu.com - so you can type gu.com to go straight to
theguardian.com (they also use it for their URL shortener)

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dphnx
That sir is a very handy tip, especially on mobile where typing’s a premium.

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icebraining
It is? I've only recently started using a mobile device, but with android's
drag-to-form-words mechanism, I can you type "guardian" faster than "gu". I
don't know about iOS, though.

~~~
spoiler
I tap faster than I swipe, although I use SwiftKey, so it makes tapping much
much easier.

I do swipe on occasion, though. Depends if I am using two or one thumb.

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lnanek2
I'm sure the domain without the "the" was taken, so this isn't particularly
useful advice for someone moving to the crowded .com TLD.

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cocoflunchy
Indeed - [https://www.guardian.com/](https://www.guardian.com/)

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maldeh
That's fair, but is it really so much work to enter three extra keys on a url?
That doesn't strike me as a convincing enough reason not to attempt a brand
change, if it otherwise makes sense. (Unless there are many frustrated mobile
users somewhere who've decided they've put up with long urls far enough!)

Using an article such as "the" in a brand typically indicates a desire to lay
stake on a common noun as a proper noun, or at least the definitive instance
of the noun. It often doesn't make sense when your brand is obviously a proper
noun or otherwise unique already, but I suppose there's plenty enough
newspapers having a variant of "Guardian" in their titles to warrant a push to
definitive-hood.

Edit: A friend also pointed out that "guardian.com" is already taken by
another established organization. I think that trumps my silly grammatical
analysis :P

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walshemj
Well shouldn't it have been the-manchester-guardian.com :-)

Will be interesting to have a look and see how well or not the in house
seo/dev team have done the migration

~~~
dc2447
URLS were and I assume still are a massive part of the collective thought
process in the Guardian but yeah, if you are GU then the internet will take
whatever you say as canonical to be canonical regardless of seo strategy

~~~
walshemj
didn't work when a major uk job site (no names no pack drill) stuffed up its
canonicals on all its job category pages cost them 1/2 a mill in less than a
week.

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EliRivers
Are there really people who will decide "I want to read the Guardian now," and
then when they find they have to type four or five letters into their browser
bar instead of just one, will decide not to bother? It's now too much effort
to type four or five keys? (It's possible, I suppose; I am way out of touch
and I still don't understand much of what the kids do now - that thing where
"Dave is the mayor of some street corner" was a total mystery to me)

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maxharlow
Having 'the' at the start is not ideal, but Guardian Glass (who own
guardian.com) no doubt wanted a lot of money for it.

In any case, all the cool kids use gu.com

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stevewillows
From a branding perspective, if you're forced to use an underscore for a
twitter or instagram name, always put it at the end.

Sad to see the Guardian go to a .com

~~~
null_ptr
This is superficial and hard to quantify, but .com has a junky feel to it
nowadays. Their co.uk sounds more reputable.

~~~
na85
To you, perhaps. To many tech people, perhaps.

But the Guardian is trying to reach more than that audience, and I'm sure
there are lots of "Fox-News Americans" who will scorn the .uk and still find
.com to be professional. They have a sense that .com is normal, and that other
TLDs are inferior.

~~~
stevewillows
I think this is extremely accurate. I'm launching a new brand next month with
a .co and I've found that people that are into tech things like it while the
older generations give me a blank stare.

~~~
null_ptr
I wonder how well-received the coming .tech/software/app/etc. gTLDs will be.
Will people still want to grab the .com for their company?

~~~
stevewillows
I think the dot com will be the traditional bet, but over time become one of
those 'nice-to-haves' \- - with the ridiculous amount of squatting on the most
bizarre terms, other tlds are becoming far more attractive.

Above this, the dot co people are making great strides in offering a wide
range of benefits to signing on. Not only discounts and freebies, but the
potential of a community. In the future, I think more tlds will adopt this
model to attract business.

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oron
This was part of my thinking in [http://getstarter.com](http://getstarter.com)
single key navigation to your favorite web sites, but for some reason it seems
not to catch on that well.

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highace
"I don’t think I visit another site beginning with x"

Yeah yeah..!

