{"id":1450,"date":"2014-06-25T14:36:04","date_gmt":"2014-06-25T14:36:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.gov.scot\/digital\/?p=1450"},"modified":"2018-02-19T16:09:49","modified_gmt":"2018-02-19T16:09:49","slug":"early-thoughts-urls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.gov.scot\/digital\/2014\/06\/25\/early-thoughts-urls\/","title":{"rendered":"Our early thoughts on URLs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><i>This a post by <\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/calumshepherd\"><span class=\"s2\"><i>Calum Shepherd<\/i><\/span><\/a><i>,\u00a0our\u00a0Head of Digital Strategy.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">In the simplest terms a URL is the location of a web page that you visit in your web browser. Handily, if you ever need to visit that web page again in the future, you can use its URL to go directly to it. You may know them as web addresses, as they are presented within the browser address bar.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-1451 lazyload\" data-src=\"https:\/\/blogs.gov.scot\/digital\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2017\/07\/address-bar.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"700\" height=\"35\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.gov.scot\/digital\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2017\/07\/address-bar.png 700w, https:\/\/blogs.gov.scot\/digital\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2017\/07\/address-bar-300x15.png 300w\" data-sizes=\"(max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB3aWR0aD0iMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSIxIiB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciPjwvc3ZnPg==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 700px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 700\/35;\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">URLs are important for a number of reasons. Users, bookmarks and apps such as Pocket use them to remember where pages are located. Searchers on Google, in addition to Google itself, also use them to gauge whether or not the page they are about to visit will be relevant for a given search query.<\/span><!--more--><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>We thought about what we needed and how that would be reflected in our URLs:<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<ul class=\"ul1\">\n<li class=\"li1\"><span class=\"s1\">Clean, clear and easy to understand<\/span><\/li>\n<li class=\"li1\"><span class=\"s1\">Relevant, but concise length<\/span><\/li>\n<li class=\"li1\"><span class=\"s1\">Include the task where it exists\u00a0e.g. \u201capply-for-council-tax\u201d, as opposed to just \u201ccouncil-tax\u201d<\/span><\/li>\n<li class=\"li1\"><span class=\"s1\">Use \u201c-\u201d for joining words, as opposed to \u201c_\u201d<\/span><\/li>\n<li class=\"li1\"><span class=\"s1\">Following a parent \/ child structure for categorisation<\/span><\/li>\n<li class=\"li1\"><span class=\"s1\">Avoiding duplication through consistent serving<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">You can read more on guidance in relation to URLs on <a href=\"https:\/\/support.google.com\/webmasters\/answer\/76329?hl=en\"><span class=\"s2\">Google\u2019s Webmaster Tools Help<\/span><\/a>. If you are interested in how <a href=\"https:\/\/support.google.com\/webmasters\/answer\/70897\"><span class=\"s2\">Google Search works<\/span><\/a>, then there is a worthy read on this subject as well. We\u2019ll be publishing more on both search and URLs in the coming months, in the form of guidelines.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Browse, Information Architecture and URLs<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">We are focused on getting the fundamentals right, ensuring content is presented as clearly as possible within the alpha. We\u2019re also keen to make sure that any move from alpha to beta is as painless as possible as well \u2013 with URLs underpinning these ambitions.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">We will be in a unique position in terms of how we expect the site to grow in the longer term and needed an approach to reflect this.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">We looked at:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul class=\"ul1\">\n<li class=\"li1\"><span class=\"s1\">GOV.UK<\/span><\/li>\n<li class=\"li1\"><span class=\"s1\">Scotland.gov.uk<\/span><\/li>\n<li class=\"li1\"><span class=\"s1\">Various modern e-commerce websites<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">We found a range of examples, with some following a best practice led format \u2013 hitting some of our core needs.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">However our colleagues at <a href=\"https:\/\/gds.blog.gov.uk\/\"><span class=\"s2\">Government Digital Service<\/span><\/a> (GOV.UK) took an approach where content items were disconnected from the browse structure and located at the first possible opportunity e.g. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gov.uk\/vehicle-tax\"><span class=\"s2\">https:\/\/www.gov.uk\/car-tax<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>We took the approach of GOV.UK, with minor variations, for the following reasons:<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<ul class=\"ul1\">\n<li class=\"li1\"><span class=\"s1\">We can amend and remove categories and sub-categories within our browse information architecture without having to move content items located under these areas<\/span><\/li>\n<li class=\"li1\"><span class=\"s1\">We can reduce the need for vanity URLs in many instances. Vanity URLs are short URLs normally used for marketing campaigns, which redirect to longer URLs within a website<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">We\u2019re going to be reviewing this over time, alongside the implications of the decision. Considerations include not following the parent \/ child approach and not having site-links available within the search engine results pages.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Guidance for URLs \u2013 technical (in addition to our principles for creating them):<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<ul class=\"ul1\">\n<li class=\"li1\"><span class=\"s1\">Avoiding the use of special characters<\/span><\/li>\n<li class=\"li1\"><span class=\"s1\">Serving all URLs with a trailing slash, in lower case and on WWW URLs, redirecting all other requests<\/span><\/li>\n<li class=\"li1\"><span class=\"s1\">Serve on either HTTPS, or HTTP \u2013 not both, redirecting all other requests<\/span><\/li>\n<li class=\"li1\"><span class=\"s1\">Be designed without the need for parameters (out-with site-search)<\/span><\/li>\n<li class=\"li1\"><span class=\"s1\">Limit max length to 2,000 Characters<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>What next?<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">We will see how it works! If our SEO isn\u2019t impacted and users don\u2019t find it confusing, we\u2019ll have an excellent way to adapt and change our browse based information architecture without requiring mass 301 Redirects. Once we have a product reaching early maturity we can then reassess.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><i>We\u2019ll be sharing this post and more<\/i><b><i>\u00a0<\/i><\/b><i>on social, so follow the team via <\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/mygovscot\"><span class=\"s2\"><i>@mygovscot<\/i><\/span><\/a><i> on Twitter\u00a0for more updates.\u00a0Have a comment?\u00a0Let us know below!<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This a post by Calum Shepherd,\u00a0our\u00a0Head of Digital Strategy. In the simplest terms a URL is the location of a web page that you visit in your web browser. Handily, if you ever need to visit that web page again in the future, you can use its URL to go directly to it. You may&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":224,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,10],"tags":[68,69,70],"class_list":["post-1450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-digital-public-services","category-mygov-scot","tag-design-and-user-experience","tag-search","tag-technology-digital-architecture"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Our early thoughts on URLs - Digital<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.gov.scot\/digital\/2014\/06\/25\/early-thoughts-urls\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Our early thoughts on URLs - Digital\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This a post by Calum Shepherd,\u00a0our\u00a0Head of Digital Strategy. 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