

Ask HN: What happened to # in URLs? - cauterize

At one point I remember seeing lots of hashbangs (#!) in URLs, as of recent that has no longer been the case. What happened?
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adventured
The hashbang was a stop gap solution for helping search engines see ajax
content. The companies that had turned to hashbangs, have just as quickly
turned away from using that technique because it's a poor hack, not a well
thought-out solution with a roadmap forward. pushState is the, apparently,
likely path forward (Google for example has put its weight behind that
approach over their previous support for hashbangs -
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiAF9VdvRPw](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiAF9VdvRPw)).

The # is still very widely used in urls, for direct linking to a part of a
page for example.

