[wp-hackers] Permalink Structure - Performance vs. SEO

[Eric Mann]

>
> There is a real advantage in the structure year / month / name of post for
> id / name of the post, but this only applies if the link being passed down
> verbally or written down on paper and I believe that less than 1% of
> exchanging links happens that way.
>

Let's try not to throw out statistics based on personal feelings. If you
have a real-world example you can use, it makes for a more credible
argument. Fact of the matter is, the average web user is not even half as
tech savvy as the average person on this list. I don't say that to demean
anyone, I'm trying to point out that building WordPress and building sites
on WordPress means we have to build for the least common denominator -
people who want to create/access content but have no idea how the technology
behind it really works.

For a real world example, think back to February of last year and the
confusion caused when a ReadWriteWeb article about Facebook scored higher
than Facebook for the query "Facebook login" on Google (
http://www.switched.com/2010/02/12/readwritewebs-facebook-log-in-fiasco-angers-confounds-google/).
 A few thousand people over the period of a few hours went to the wrong site
trying to log in to Facebook because they'd type "facebook login" rather
than than "facebook.com" in their browser.

My point is that people will be confused by URLs and links. Particularly if
they're long strings with meaningless numbers (i.e. post IDs).