New test obscures the full URL.
Google is at it again, tinkering with how it displays URLs in the Chrome browser.
The company has tested different ways of showing a site’s identity in search as well as Chrome.
Android Police notes that a new test feature shows only the second and top level domain and hides the path after that. It might be that the full URL is displayed if you hover over the Omnibox/address.
Being able to see the full URL quickly is essential. I use it for clues about where I am on a website’s structure, when the content was published, and more.
But not everyone agrees, especially when it comes to how less sophisticated web users interact with URLs.
Seen in the best possible light, Google wants to ensure a good customer experience. This means avoiding phishing sites and having a clean browsing experience. Google engineers shared their view of URLs in this video. This is Google’s official reasoning for the new test; it wants to see if it makes it easier for users to identify phishing and social engineering sites.
And for domain names, focusing so much on the second level domain could be a good thing. It focuses on domains as a brand.
But as Android Police points out, you can look at this in a different light:
However, it’s also worth considering that making the web address less important, as this feature does, benefits Google as a company. Google’s goal with Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) and similar technologies is to keep users on Google-hosted content as much as possible, and Chrome for Android already modifies the address bar on AMP pages to hide that the pages are hosted by Google. Modifying addresses on the desktop is another step towards making them irrelevant, which hurts the decentralized nature of the internet as a whole.
Lifesavings.online says
Google owns powerhouse ‘span the dot’ extensions such as .ING. They are positioning themselves to rank ‘legitimately’ based on nTLD EMD domains under their newest algorithms. There’s a reason they have driverless.cars and such. I wrote about it warning yas here:
https://www.namepros.com/threads/google-has-started-to-hide-urls-in-the-search-results.1161957/#post-7475873
2 posts there another one 2 posts down.
Everyone has opinions. I have mine.
Lifesavings.online says
It was only a test briefly hid URLS. They wanted to see CTR without user knowing URL. Just to confirm what they already pretty much knew. A little extra data.
Javier Ramos says
Google has been testing this for a while, the main goal is to keep people inside of Google instead of sending the traffic to them, this is why Branding is so important because you want people looking for you and not having to pick from the search engine results.
David J Castello says
Antitrust lawsuit against Google is long overdue.
Lifesavings.online says
Probably won’t happen if you can believe Google is a US gov. proxy asset. /conspiracy
John says
Okay, David – now you’re talking. +1
Mark Thorpe says
Agreed!
Richard Lau says
Looks like what they are proposing would benefit premium domains as the focus is put on the root domain name. See:
https://imgur.com/a/bnH0LWy
Niko Gol says
google is evil
Mr. SomeOne says
Agree!!!!