What’s in a domain name? How the humble URL is evolving.

Do you remember a time online before Google? Can you hear the sound of the dial-up internet in the background — and the annoyance of being cut offline while someone sent a fax?

What were URLs originally designed for?

In the early days of the internet, it was super hard to find anything. There was yet to be a search engine developed to house all of the information that is available online in one central space. Not only that, there were only a few hundred web pages at the infancy of the internet, so there wasn’t really a need to conduct a global search — you were online for a reason. If you were checking out a business, they would advertise their websites with their domain name, which you’d type into your search bar. If you got one character wrong, you wouldn’t be able to access anything at all. Their websites weren’t like what we see today. They were primarily text-only sites with very pixelated graphics and a very slow load time.

The first search engines

When the first search engines were invented (we’re thinking AOL and Google here), they weren’t very good. This was in the early days of AI and the infancy of internet speeds, and there was a strong human element behind the cataloguing and processing of information online. This is something that is feasible at the start of this process of cataloguing everything online, but as the internet continued to grow into a bigger beast, it became harder and harder for humans to keep up with the scale of the work.

Search engines today

Popular search engines that we have today use algorithms and crawlers to tag and catalogue data online, with these technologies working around the clock, 365 days a year, to ensure everything is catalogued correctly. Due to these major improvements in search engines’ ability to catalogue information and share it with the right people at the right time, we’re now more reliant than ever on search engines.

Coupling these advances in search technology with other major advances in technology and affordable internet, almost half the world is online at any given time! We’re able to access the internet on our smartphones, laptops, desks, gaming consoles and TV’s — as long as we’re connected to WiFi. As we now begin to access the internet on a multitude of devices that have different preferences for online browsing, the way search engines are operating is changing again.

Does the browser you use matter?

We now have more choice on what browser to use and for what — if you’re curious to know the differences, check out our blog on how different browsers can change everything. Different devices will often force you into which browser to use. On your Mac or iPhone, Safari comes preinstalled, while Chrome is pre-installed for Google phones, along with YouTube and other Google products.

As we’ve seen more choice in browsers, we’ve seen a gradual shift with browsers changing their requirements for URLs and how you access websites. No longer do we have to type out ‘www’ before you put in a website URL — you’ll still get to where you need to be. In fact, you don’t even have to type in a website address anymore, a simple search will often pull up the result you’re looking for — with the right keywords of course. These advances in search technology are beginning to bring the importance of a URL into question.

Are URLs still relevant?

There have been rumblings for a while of the removal — some call it a ‘senseless attack’ — of the humble URL bar. Google is currently pushing ahead with an update for Chrome version 85 to . This update will remove everything except the domain name from your URL bar. In fact, you’ve probably used an internet browser without the URL bar, as whenever you visit Google Chrome in full-screen mode, you do lose the URL bar so you can maximise your screen size with the content you’re searching for. A possible step further could be removing the display altogether once you’re on the actual page — as you don’t need to know where you are once you’ve arrived (hopefully in the right spot). Some critics of this version believe this is paving the way for the complete removal of the URL bar from online browsers entirely. modify what your URL bar shows

Why hide the URL bar?

For years we have seen the Chrome team set out to kill the URL bar, as they don’t see that it is a clear enough way to express your web identity. Have you ever visited a website and travelled a few pages in and the URL bar begins to look like a crazy cumulation of characters? It can get distracting and confusing — especially when you go to share it with someone online and it ends up becoming a massive paragraph.

Cyber Safety

Malicious cyber attackers have capitalised on this feature of URLs, building malicious sites to exploit this confusion to launch phishing escapades. They’re able to confuse unsuspecting users into sharing their identity and private information via sites that look almost as real as their true counterparts. Some cyber hackers buy up domain names that are very similar to trustworthy websites to legitimise this process even further.

Improved UI

Hiding the URL bar makes your online experience feel more like you’re utilising an app on your phone/computer. It brings a cleaner look to the experience. This is something that Google is looking to achieve with the removal of the URL bar in Chrome, encouraging you to add in your frequently visited pages as apps on your homepage. Once you start up your browser, all you’ll need to do is click on one of the frequently visited pages on your homepage and you’re taken there straight away — removing the hassle of typing out an address. This will make the experience very similar to the experience you have on your smartphone, blurring the lines between the two interconnected devices.

How would hiding the URL help Google?

A clean-cut design and fewer chances of phishing is something great for Google to promote within Chrome, but what if there’s a bigger idea at play here? Hiding parts of a URL can help Google prioritise something called Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP). An AMP is an open-source standard that Google runs that allows you to create web pages that load quickly on mobile devices. This helps improve the user experience and load time. This is something that is super helpful for Google with Google Ads, as it minimises the time between clicking your ad and moving to your landing page. Faster load times = reduced bounced rates, improving your conversion rates and ultimately leading you to continue advertising with Google.

Google currently modifies the behaviour when you visit an AMP site on an Android device to hide the fact that Google hosts these pages. This helps keep people on Google related content for as long as possible. Bringing this similar behaviour to desktop could lead to the URL becoming less and less relevant, and less transparency behind who really hosts this page — and possibly threaten the decentralised nature of the internet entirely.

It’s hard to say when we’ll see a permanent shift to hidden URLs reflected across the board, and what this will look like once it’s executed. We already see a disappearance of the URL bar, and a shortening of URLs in a multitude of browsers (and browser versions) and, like most things, some people prefer this appearance than others. The longer-term implications of internet decentralisation, and the future of how we browse and work online, lead us to some big picture questions about the next decade of online access. How the humble URL will fit into the online mould is just one of those questions.

Originally published at https://www.hutsix.com.au on November 10, 2020.