Rev="canonical" tags to cure short url problems

Re:Rev="canonical" tags to cure short url problems by poutine on Sunday April 12, 2009 @11:00PM (#559301)

As usual a lot of people jumping in and engineering a solution without understanding the problem.

- Twitter links are almost never clicked on outside of the first several hours. 301 redirects will cause search engines to use the canonical URL as well. This Link Rot Apocalypse is largely a bunch of nonsense.

- People use short URL services to get analytics on the data they're sharing, not just to shorten the URL. People like their click stats.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Rev="canonical" tags to cure short url problems by Semiapies on Monday April 13, 2009 @11:58AM (#559924)

I agree on the Link Rot Apocalypse. I've seen services like URL Tea vape to be sure, but bigger services like TinyURL are rather more stable. In fact, I use TinyURL a lot to link to news stories, and many's the time I've followed a shortened, descriptive link back to news sites to see that the sacred "canonical" link now 404s.

People are overstating both the ephemerality of shortener sites and the longevity of original URIs.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Rev="canonical" tags to cure short url problems by joshu on Monday April 13, 2009 @12:38AM (#559385)

"almost never clicked on outside of the first several hours"

Got data to back that up?

The click stats are really great for addictiveness.

I think rev="canonical" is not a great solution either.

BTW, I meant Link Rot Apocalypse facetiously.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Rev="canonical" tags to cure short url problems by poutine on Monday April 13, 2009 @10:46AM (#559821)

In fact I do have data to back that up but I cannot share.

[ Parent | on HN ]