Semantic URLs have some great benefits. The most obvious one is SEO-friendliness (search engine optimization - Google simply likes semantic URLs better). Not only that but users tend to prefer semantic URLs when they come up in search results.
However, assume for a moment that you're the user and you want to re-post a specific article...is it really a net benefit to make a longer URL like: http://www.dogs.com/articles/wiener-dogs-do-super-cute-things-when-you-play-with-them versus http://www.dogs.com/articles/158? You may have made a trade-off here: SEO-friendliness versus ease of use. As a user, you probably already know the URL you are looking for, so that part is easy. You probably can guess that articles are under "/articles", so that part is easy as well. So sometimes it comes down to which is easier to use - a super-long article "slug" or a simple number. Ask yourself what happens when you want to send the link via text or Twitter or some other text messaging service/ You're probably going to appreciate a shorter link so you don't have to plug the URL into a URL-shortener service like bit.ly in order to keep your message brief.
Of course, the disadvantage may lie in the fact that numbers are not obvious. If you read a lot of articles on a particular site, you will have a lot of numbered links in your history to contend with. Good luck finding that one article you saw about super-cute wiener dogs when you have a bunch of similar links with article numbers! That said, you could always bookmark a page you like and call it whatever you want (which is actually the preferred behavior, but I digress...).
Ultimately, you need to be smart about your semantic URLs. Realize that search engines are NEVER going to be able to index any pages behind a login, so for sure you don't need semantic URLs there. Realize as well that super-descriptive URLs may not be helpful to your user in some cases where the URL may get shared. Also consider that if you aren't a really popular website that publishes a bunch of daily content, it really may not help much to be very descriptive. Also, you're going to need some additional code to check that your descriptive strings are unique and generate a new one if it isn't. Also, storing a long article "slug" means using more storage in your database.
I'm not saying semantic URLs should never be used. They are definitely appropriate for certain sites and circumstances. Just realize that they are not a panacea and you may actually be shooting yourself in the foot when you insist on using them for every situation.
However, assume for a moment that you're the user and you want to re-post a specific article...is it really a net benefit to make a longer URL like: http://www.dogs.com/articles/wiener-dogs-do-super-cute-things-when-you-play-with-them versus http://www.dogs.com/articles/158? You may have made a trade-off here: SEO-friendliness versus ease of use. As a user, you probably already know the URL you are looking for, so that part is easy. You probably can guess that articles are under "/articles", so that part is easy as well. So sometimes it comes down to which is easier to use - a super-long article "slug" or a simple number. Ask yourself what happens when you want to send the link via text or Twitter or some other text messaging service/ You're probably going to appreciate a shorter link so you don't have to plug the URL into a URL-shortener service like bit.ly in order to keep your message brief.
Of course, the disadvantage may lie in the fact that numbers are not obvious. If you read a lot of articles on a particular site, you will have a lot of numbered links in your history to contend with. Good luck finding that one article you saw about super-cute wiener dogs when you have a bunch of similar links with article numbers! That said, you could always bookmark a page you like and call it whatever you want (which is actually the preferred behavior, but I digress...).
Ultimately, you need to be smart about your semantic URLs. Realize that search engines are NEVER going to be able to index any pages behind a login, so for sure you don't need semantic URLs there. Realize as well that super-descriptive URLs may not be helpful to your user in some cases where the URL may get shared. Also consider that if you aren't a really popular website that publishes a bunch of daily content, it really may not help much to be very descriptive. Also, you're going to need some additional code to check that your descriptive strings are unique and generate a new one if it isn't. Also, storing a long article "slug" means using more storage in your database.
I'm not saying semantic URLs should never be used. They are definitely appropriate for certain sites and circumstances. Just realize that they are not a panacea and you may actually be shooting yourself in the foot when you insist on using them for every situation.
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