No More URLs!
There’s a rather interesting observation by Cabel in Japanese advertisement panels - many of them have decided to abandon showing the URL, but instead recommending the keywords to search for. Keywords are probably shorter and more directly relevant to the promoted products, and it could also be more wieldy especially for a nation where some are perhaps still less familiar with the Roman alphabets. I suppose the advertisers would have to be really good in making sure their sites are the top returns in search engines.
Cabel also has an interesting question:
But, I ask you: could this be done in the USA? Wouldn’t search spammers and/or “optimizers” ruin this within seconds? I did a few tests with major name brands and they’re almost always the top hit on Google (surprisingly, even Panic). But if Nabisco ran a nationwide ad campaign for a hot new product and told users to Google for “Burlap Thins” to learn more, wouldn’t someone sneaky get there before they do?
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Yeah, thats right. I’m just here in tokyo (i’m an italian designer) and i was amazed when i saw this new way of link pages. Really awesome. Sometimes some ads show even the video of it, of typing and querying and of course results. And i was thinking about these few days before travel here. I’m really amazed. Semantically a link is like a home adress, but search engine tags are like your name, sourname and function in your business. These things are definetely esier to remember. Good post, anyway.
I created telldodo.com to serve exactly this purpose: replace URLs with easy to remember, easy to pronounce, easy to spell UNIQUE keywords. Perhaps I should hook up with someone in Japan to create a Japanese version of telldodo. Let me know if you have an interest in developing this idea…