On Dec 28, 2009, at 4:57 PM, Jared Spool wrote:
In My Opinion: most users won't notice.
It'll depend far more on the content. Why did people type in
pear.com to begin with? It wasn't a random act -- something told
them to do that. Whatever content is on the resulting page, that
should match their expectation. If it matches, they won't bother to
check the URL.
Further, why are they typing in the URL in the first place. That will
only happen if they are transcribing it from some form of print media
(or word of mouth). In which case they are going to be that much more
aware of what they are expecting to see, and so pear.com becoming
fruit.com/pear won't be an issue if the forwarded URL and the visual
display match their expectations.
Consider http://iflyswa.com and http://iphone.com for examples of
redirects which are not going to be an issue if someone types them
in. And in reverse, something like http://outcountrydance.com, which
goes to a mirror of http://iaglcwdc.org and has no "OutCountryDance"
text content.
(In fact, it may actually be more of an issue if they clicked on a
link that was supposed to go to pear.com and then redirected them
elsewhere. It's that surprise redirect from a mystery link that is
the problem people are trained to watch for, I think.)
-- Jim
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