Google URLs Are Too Ugly, Says Dave Winer, Who Is Always Right

Published by Zacqary Adam Green at 6:51 PM on January 17, 2009 in Commentary. View Comments Tags: , , . Short URL: http://plankhead.com/RS1

Dave Winer maintains one of the first blogs ever, and though he didn’t exactly invent RSS, he’s pretty much the reason the entire Internet uses it. He also effectively made podcasting possible. And he can cure cancer with his mind. Needless to say, this is a man who knows what he’s talking about. Now, despite all that, the fact that Google really, REALLY needs to clean up their URLs could have been said by Sarah Palin and it would have been just as correct.

Most Google services, Google Maps in particular, have obscenely convoluted URLs. Why do I have to type “http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=eiffel+tower&sll=40.748517,-73.985345&sspn=0.007445,0.01369&ie=UTF8&ll=48.858299,2.294544&spn=0.006296,0.01369&z=17&iwloc=A” instead of just “http://maps.google.com/Eiffel-tower”? It’s the Eiffel Tower! There isn’t exactly more than one! And if somehow there is more than one, um…you’re Google. You can show us.

Our friend Mr. Winer had this to say:

Google should hire someone to beautify their URLs. Seriously would make their products 100 percent more attractive and usable. A URL czar.

I agree, Dave, though you seem to be making suggestions to them free of charge. Mind if I join in? Well, actually, this is the Internet, so if you did mind for some reason, you wouldn’t be able to do anything about it, but I’ll just assume you’re okay with it.

Currently, Google Maps does have a somewhat less bone-headed URL system: http://maps.google.com/?q=Eiffel+tower will search for “Eiffel tower” (though if you click “Link” in the toolbar thing, it still gives you the gigantic thing to copy and paste for no reason). This is exactly the same as normal Google Search, with which you have http://www.google.com/q?=search. However, this system uses two horrible conventions in URL naming that need to be Killed® With Fire™: “?q=” and “+”.

“?q=” is a set of three ugly characters that don’t need to be there. A simple “/” will work fine, thank you. And using “+” as a space is ugly and annoying; the “+” key isn’t anywhere near the home row and requires you to hold down Shift. While the hyphen isn’t a major improvement, at least it’s used in lots of URLs, doesn’t require you to hold Shift, and gives a much better aesthetic feeling of a space than “+”. And given that it’s Google, hyphens are automatically detected by their omniscient robots if you don’t type them in your search, so there’s no “but I want to search for a hyphen” conflict. Because you probably don’t.

Or MAYBE they could use, um, a space. Seems to work perfectly fine already.

Now, obviously, eliminating the “?q=” (it looks like the emoticon for licking a runny nose, ewwwwww…) would require some things to be reconsidered. On Google Maps, it would be pretty easy (Google Maps Support could easily be moved to “maps.google.com/support/[language]“, or, perhaps, “help.google.com/maps”), but vanilla Google Search still launches its searches from pure “google.com/?q=”. Well, there’s an easy solution here…

How about to search for “Decent Looking URLs”, you go to “search.google.com/Decent Looking URLs“? OH GOD THAT’S HORRIBLE WE CAN’T DO THAT!!!!!! >.>

Honestly, Google, just sit an intern down with the .htaccess file for a few hours. It’s not that hard.

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  • But that's what they do! There are (probably) hundreds of Google search parameters, but you only get ones that are in use for whatever reason. Most of them are for things like search statistics, Zeitgeist and Google Trends, or just things such as interface analysis (thus why you often get 'btnG=Search' or 'btnG=Google+Search' involved in the query.

    .htaccess as we currently know it cannot account for optional variables, thus it cannot be used at Google and it's many an optional variable.

    Wikia Search does have pretty(er) URLs - 'search.html#search' - although it is a much, much, simpler search engine. It doesn't even have pagination, probably no other stats than how many people have used it (which doesn't require additions to the query string.)
  • Perhaps not with .htaccess then, but it's definitely possible with a variety of methods. TinyURL does some kind of hashing-thing, and by typing http://gog.is/what/is/love you can already see what third parties have been able to come up with to fix Google.

    The issue with using third party tools to Google things with acceptable URL structures and lengths is that only the more tech-savvy people know they exist. If Google would at least fix the "Link" button in Google Maps to create some kind of TinyURL-style hash, that would improve things quite a lot.

    But I really think that the question mark needs to die. All those parameters with their equals signs and letters can turn into emoticons quite easily if you use a piece of crap like a first-party IM client or MySpace. So this is less for people like you and me, and more for people like our grandmothers or idiot friends.
  • It's a simple case of convenience for both Google and the user really. Because Google search pages have so many possible variables that to overwrite them all with .htaccess is nigh on impossible - or at the very least a job that would take bloody months to complete with no better outcome than more inconvenience to the user and making it harder to add new things to query strings - should there need to be (something very likely.)

    Only 'q' is a required variable, 'start' is used for pagination, and they're about the only required ones there are in a Google Search. However then you've got internationalisation, so ya gotta tag on 'hl' for language; the user might be using the Firefox search bar, so they have to track that with 'client' and 'rls' (Firefox gets paid by Google by how many searches the browser gets them) ... and so on. There's too many possible variables to make prettying them possible.

    Same goes for Maps: What if the user doesn't want just one specific location? A Maps URL holds the search query, coordinates, zoom level, and all your settings (satellite view, showing Picasa photos, etc.) so that the person you send the link to sees it exactly as you do.

    Google would be much better carrying on working on stuff, rather than partaking in some near-impossible task to add slashes to everything :P
  • It is true that linking to a ridiculously specific thing on Google, such as exact coordinates on a map with 939258 customizations, would probably require a much lengthier link. But when it doesn't require that, wouldn't it be nice if Google gave you the only stuff required in your URL bar?

    I don't see this kind of thing as nearly impossible; if they can code something that can automatically detect if a Prince song is playing on a radio in the background of a YouTube video so they can take it down, they can get some people to prettify their URLs. Maybe a Google Labs project.
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