"If the URL looks like garbage people won’t click it" I'm not so sure of this. U...

vukers · on April 5, 2013

Completely agree... this includes domain names.

At some point, searching for terms like "best hdtv 2013" would return a page full of sites with perfect urls like http://www.best-hdtv-2013.com/, and all of them would be extremely spammy and lacking in actual content. Seems less prevalent these days.

rschmitty · on April 5, 2013

I agree wholeheartedly.

"http://example.org/furniture/desk-chairs/herman-millers-mirr... makes me think crappy search landing page website that is probably malware infested I don't want to click, ever

However, I believe that is mostly due to the domain. If it was amazon.com I'd click it likewise if it was http://www.example.com/gp/product/B0002K11BK/ref=sr_1_5?ie=U... I would also think I'm going to get spammed :)

spyder · on April 5, 2013

And the other thing is that we aren't really clicking on URLs, because it's just a string you cannot click on it. We are clicking on anchor texts and using ugly URLs as anchor text can be the problem. If the anchor text is a descriptive title then most (non-techie) users doesn't even see the URL before they click because they don't know it's displayed at the bottom of the browser if you move the mouse over them.

dreamfactory · on April 5, 2013

...cannot believe that nobody else has pointed this out