URL Structure (Web Development)

Examples of URL structure

• Examples:
  • http://law.stackexchange.com/questions/14908/are-newspapers-quotes-of-other-people-protected-by-copyright/
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_government_of_the_United_States
  • Facebook
    • /pages/
    • /bookmarks/
    • /groups/
    • /campaigns/
    • /settings
    • /help/
    • /support/
    • /messages/
    • /events/
    • /intl/
    • /hashtag/
    • /topic/
    • /onthisday/
    • /offers/
    • /games/
    • /arcade/
    • /translations/
    • /insights/
    • /editor/
    • /apps/
    • /shops/
    • /fundraisers/
    • /livemap/
    • /saved/
    • /salegroups/
    • /pokes
    • developers.facebook.com/apps/
  • https://www.facebook.com/nathan.wailes
  • YouTube
    • /watch
    • /user
    • /account
    • /results
    • /upload/
    • /playlist
    • /logout
    • /channel/
    • /feed/
    • /subscription_manager
      • Interesting that they chose an underscore here instead of a dash.
    • /yt/
      • /about/
      • /press/
      • /copyright/
      • /creators/
      • /advertise/
      • /dev/
      • /+youtube/
      • /policyandsafety/
      • /testtube/
    • /t/terms
• Thoughts:
  • Subdomains are used for major divisions of the website.
  • There's a single namespacing-entry after the domain which allows the website to separate out their main content from all the other stuff they need to have on the site.
    • 'wikipedia.org/wiki/name_of_the_page'
    • 'stackexchange.com/questions/constant_id_of_the_page'
      • Interestingly, with stackexchange they have a constant ID which allows the user to change the name of the post (and thus the descriptive URL), whereas with Facebook you can change your username and thus change the URL to your page.
      • I suspect the key here is that StackExchange questions are more likely to be both 1) pasted/sent via email, in chat rooms, etc. and at the same time 2) have their titles changed. The combination of those two things makes it worth having a constant identifier.
        • Contrast that with Wikipedia, where articles' names tend to stay pretty constant, and I doubt they get sent around quite as much as a StackExchange answer.

Articles

• Google - Keep a simple URL structure
  
  • Overly complex URLs, especially those containing multiple parameters, can cause a problems for crawlers by creating unnecessarily high numbers of URLs that point to identical or similar content on your site. 
• 2015.02.24 - Moz.com - 15 SEO Best Practices for Structuring URLs
• 2015.04.06 - QuickSprout - Does URL Structure Even Matter? A Data Driven Answer