Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Unique vs. Generic URLs

Author:Lawrence Lee
Posted:3/8/1999; 3:23:29 PM
Topic:Unique vs. Generic URLs
Msg #:3808
Prev/Next:3807 / 3809

Dave posted a link to Fortune on Scripting News today that highlights a chronic problems with sites making a decision between Unique or Generic URLs (or a combination of the two).

Unique and Generic URLs. Some sites (even with a CMS) decide to use generic URLs that will hold content that changes over time with new content. Versus a unique URL which can be a more permanent location.

The problem strikes when people forward URLs to friends or is published on a site (like Scripting News) to only find the article you originally linked to replaced by another article.

In the case of Fortune's site, at the time of publishing, a unique URL to the same exact story is floating around their site. But you have to ask the search engine for the address to the unique URL. (Not to mention that it's not common knowledge to get the URL).

There are branches of this problem with sites that frame unique URLs (eg. Salon Magazine).

I think that obscuring the location of a Unique URL degrades the service of the site linking to another site and the site being linked to. Why make it hard for people and vertical portals to send you quality traffic?

I post links every day to a long list of sites and I regularly confront this problem and go out of my way to find a unique URL or return when the content is overwritten and find a unique URL in the archives.

[1] Unique URL can be interchanged with persistent URLs, if that makes more sense. (Jakob Nielsen mentioned this in a review of my site).

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