Are URLs On The Way Out?
A closer look at just how important your web address is in today’s online world.
The website has long been an integral part of the road map of the internet, with URLs serving as so-called “addresses”. In the early days of getting online, people would only know how to navigate the internet by knowing what URL they wanted to visit. Without those, they’d be lost.
These days, though, we’re increasingly hearing about the death—or at least the decline—of the URL. Our online habits and the way we navigate the internet has changed enormously, so much so that remembering URLs and visiting homepages is not a common path of online discovery in the modern internet era.
John Lax, Head of Facebook product design, was recently quoted as saying that we are now witnessing the decline of the website thanks to social networks driving traffic rather than URLs. Though there are numerous indications that he is correct, this seismic change is unlikely to happen overnight. As he told Mashable, “The one thing about the web is that it is such a large system that it will take a long time for that energy to unwind, but when you look at the data, you can definitely see the move to mobile and that will continue. But none of these things go away. People still make vinyl records.”
While Lax is probably right that URLs may never fully disappear from the web but rather recede into the distance, his overarching ideas that the URL is becoming less relevant seems valid. Here is a look at the four main reasons behind the decline of the URL
Mobile: The prevalence of mobile devices as a main form of internet access—as well as the mobile applications they contain—is a main driver of the decline of the URL. Instead of visiting the website of a publisher or service you want to use, on a mobile device you can simply open the app, no URL required. These purpose-built applications have done a lot to drive people away from their browsers and onto their phones. But one downside is that they’ve cut down on people’s ability to discover unexpected things online, as users tend to stick to the same applications they trust.
Search engines: When someone needs to hire a plumber or find a specialist, they are far more likely to type their query into Google than to visit a website to find what they’re looking for. Search engines have made it so that we don’t actually have to pay attention to what URLs we are visiting, and we very rarely need to visit homepages. Rather, we simply navigate from search results directly to the page we need to visit. As SEO consultant Boris Mann wrote on his viral blog post about URLs “The only reason you need a “good” URL is for offline marketing purposes. But even there, people are still likelier to remember the name of your company, and just type that in. Bottom line: Google/search is easier for end users. So optimize your site.”
Market saturation: With so many websites and associated URLs out there, asking people to remember what a web address is in order to visit their site seems outdated and, frankly, too much to ask. Now we are just as likely to look someone up on social media as to visit their website. Back in the days where there were fewer URLs, this was not the case.
Social media networks: Increasingly, social media sites are hosting the content of publishers directly on their platforms rather than having users redirect to a URL. Functions like Facebook’s Instant Articles and Snapchat Discover mean that users don’t need to visit URLs to read and enjoy the content they want, further hastening the URL’s decline.
While URLs may be on the way out, every website needs a domain name. Get yours today from UK2.