Only in the age of Google does a URL this long make sense

June 13, 2008

I was perusing recently one of the local free weeklies (I can’t remember which one, Nashville Rage or Nashville Scene). I like scanning the classifieds section, I know that is old fashioned with Craigslist but sometimes I just like to roll old school.

Anyway, one of the ads was for a border collie rescue group. And I kid you not, their URL took up half of the tiny classified ad. That’s because they spelled out their entire organization’s name in the URL: bordercollierescueofmiddletennessee.com.

I’m looking at that URL and thinking, couldn’t you guys find something shorter? There’s no way anybody is going to be able to type in that url on a first try. And I couldn’t clip the ad out because I was reading the paper at the library. I know, it’s a free weekly and I could just grab a copy on my way out but then I’d be killing trees just to get that one ad.

It only makes sense in terms of being able to search for the terms on Google. Still even then it took me a while to find them because there are apparently border collie rescue groups in eastern and western Tennessee as well. So they all three show up when you do searches around terms like “border collies tennessee”. I eventually hunted them down when I remembered to include “middle” as one of the search terms.

Anyway, now that I found them I’m tempted to go and check out some of their adoptable dogs. Probably an older one, because they’d be house broken and would be a bit mellower than a puppy or younger dog. Besides I always feel so sorry for those older dogs — they must have spent years with somebody and then got abandoned or turned in to the rescue group.