URL style

Which one is preferable from a user´s point of view

[andreasfriedrich]

Given the choice between

acco/show/ansbach_hotel+gr%FCnwald.html

and

acco/show/ansbach_hotel_grunwald

which URL style would you choose?

Would users suspect something strange going on with with the first alternative?

Points to consider:

- The first alternative is the urlencoded real name as found in the db. It´s easy to look up.
- The second URL looks nicer but requires some more processing (nothing a user would consider, I know :)).

Your thoughts would be much appreciated.

Andreas

[msr986]

I think users always prefer something that they can read.

I vote for number two.

[jatar_k]

To be completely honest I don't think it will matter all that much but I would still go for the second one. I think users would be more comfortable if they looked up and saw that. They may even be inclined to remember it when their browser auto completes it.

[deejay]

Go with the second. I know my users when looking through SERPs will look at the URL to see if that gives them a clue as to which is their best choice to click.

Not that they are particularly skilled, just that they are cautious about pop-up hells and irrelevant results. They've decided for themselves that 'sensible' URLs are more likely to be helpful.

[jdMorgan]

Andreas,

I believe there is some sort of standard way of spelling proper germanic letters with accent marks using conventional unaccented "english" spellings. I'm no language expert, but it has to do with inserting other vowels before or after the one that would have had the accent mark.

Like Gr%FCnwald -> Gruenwald, perhaps? (I wish I could remember more about this subject)

If this is a system that your visitors are familiar and comfortable with, maybe it would be a good compromise.

Jim

[andreasfriedrich]

Thanks for your input.

Jim, you are right on that. ü,ä,ö can be written as ue,ae,oe. But there are still a lot of other accented letters left like é, à, ê. So while it is an ok methord for umlauts it won´t work for all the other accented letters in European languages.

To avoid urlencoding the name I will have to transform it to contain only ascii characters. This will lead to a loss of information, which will make it harder to look up the relevant record in the database.

Andreas

[jdMorgan]

loss of information

This is a very interesting problem you are working on - much more interesting than it appeared at first. I only wish I knew more about the subject area... Some of the accents, accent grave, accent ague (acute) can also be simulated (in english) by a trailing letter (e.g. é -> eh) but that is not an "international convention" that most people would understand, and it would look ugly.

So, having addressed umlauts, you are back to the original question with only a slightly smaller scope - a "techically precise" URL versus an aesthetically-pleasing URL. If you find a workable solution, please post. This is a challenge that many EU webmasters may face.

Jim