- January 27, 2007
- 1 comment
Noticed Amazon (AMZN) changed their url structure, and are now putting some of the key words of the title up front.
Here’s an example. On Jan 9th, the url for Spolsky’s UI book looked like this (line breaks and bolding added):
Today, the url for the same book looks like this:
Note this URL is not valid:
http://www.amazon.com/User-Interface-Design-Programmers-Spolsky
which suggests the human readable words up front aren’t functional — they’re likely stripped off by a filter — but probably there for the benefit of the search engines.
Two take-aways for online marketers.
One. When the world’s largest web retailer begins placing product names in urls for organic SEO benefit, that is noteworthy.
Two. Whenever you change url structures, absolutely make sure your old urls still work.
If you like this post, consider subscribing to our RSS feed. You can also have new posts sent to you via email.
Similar Posts
- Usability Standing On One Foot
- What we’re reading: Joel Spolsky’s User Interface Design for Programmers
- Rant: Amazon’s Poor Site Search
- What We’re Reading: IT
- What We’re Reading: Dreaming In Code, Scott Rosenberg
SEO is important. Content and incoming links will reign supreme for the forseeable future but the little details are important too.
I have similar links, the URi may not appear valid but it is quite valid. The words help the search engines IF they are reasonable and valid. Don’t go keyword stuffing here, think about your visitors.