420 Design Blog
No more URL advertising
26 Mar 2008 | Angie H
In a recent blog post, Cabel Sasser tells a bit about his observation of Japanese advertising. Basically, instead of telling people to go to a specific URL (such as mygreatcompany.com), they tell them to use a specific search term.
If you stop and think about this it makes complete sense. I personally use the URL/address bar in my browser, but I've seen many folks who don't. Instead, they go straight to Google and look up the company, service or product name they're looking for. I've even seen some people put the URL right into the search field in Google.
Is it effective? I can't say with any certainty, though I'm sure it's working for companies in Japan. But out of sheer curiosity I tried about a dozen client sites using this method and all but 2 showed up in the top spot (and in one case, top 5). Whether or not this catches on in the US remains to be seen, but I for one would like to see us move in that direction. Not only does this method make sense in the way that a lot of users get to websites, but it just seems more practical in some way.