URL Alias Best Practices?

What best practices should be considered when implementing URL Alias?

[Apharcyde]

Hello,
Recently we migrated to new servers and I had the opportunity to review all of our Alias/Vanity URLs that have accumulated over time.

Previously these Alias requests would be implemented no questions asked, but clearly they need to be managed more closely.

An example of how these alias would accumulate... Our marketing department would request 30...40..75 aliases at a time to track traffic from different regional print ads.

I've since thwarted such requests with more sensible solutions like coupon codes to track the success instead of traffic to an alias.

However, my question is what if any "rules of thumb" are there for URL Alias life-cycles? What criteria define an acceptable reason to implement a URL Alias.

Thanks for the feedback!

[edited by: Apharcyde at 5:18 pm (utc) on Feb. 25, 2009]

[maximillianos]

If your URL has too many query string parameters, or is excessively long, a URL alias would be useful in making it more "user friendly".

Many folks feel that making a complicated or difficult to understand url more friendly is a good reason. Some feel padding it with keywords is a good reason.

One thing is for certain. You do not want to get yourself caught up in a situation where you have 30-40 url's all pointing to the same content just for tracking purposes. That might start to get you into trouble with duplicate content, etc.