adultstudies.trnty.edu

Oh, Christ! Where to begin? The alllowercase? The non-intuitive abbreviation? Reminds me of Flutter, the parody of Twitter featuring a "nano-blogging" platform that strips out the vowels. 2 thmbs dwn fr ths bd rl.

www.ivri.it

I saw quite a few URLs on Vehicles in the bigger cities in Italy. This one was promoting the Instituti Di Vigilanza Reuniti D’Ital. Can’t fault the URL selection here but I don’t love the alllowercase display. I much prefer ALLCAPS when it comes to Abbreviations as that makes the series of letters much more recognizable as an abbreviation and not some weird word. If only ivri-one understood this.

uti.edu

Here's another from Bob Kahns. In the understatement of the year, he points out that UTI "certainly has other meanings for some." Let's just hope he doesn't know from experience! (Sorry, Bob... don't get pissed at me!)

washingtondcbmw.com

Here's an URL spotted by the mysterious "belieber." Too many Acronyms/Abbreviations going on here. Some Leading Caps and BMW would be the ultimate URLing machine.

yeswehaveawebsite.com/CustomSvcs

Here's one submitted by Olivia McKinsey thru the GUBU Facebook Page. Sometimes I feel really bad for small businesses trying to make it on the world wide web. I can just picture how this one went down... "Sunnovagun, if one more person walks in asks me if we have a website!"

www.FJVW.com

Much to my chURLgrin, Fletcher Jones Volkswagen went with the acronym here. FWIW, methinks FJVW are just too weird letters to string together.

www.eiu.edu/~adulted

Just when you think you've seen it all, a truly one-of-a-kind Bad URL rears its ugly head -- or, in this case, it's ugly tilde. Props to Aaron Bynum who spotted this in the Champaign-Urbana News Gazette. As he pointed out, it's also a best practice not to use the word "adult" in your URL unless you're in the porn industry. This URL makes me say eww, not eiu.

MOREMPG4ME.COM

Thomas Umstattd Jr. has been on an URL-tear lately. He spotted this one at a gas station. While I won't begrudge the acronym for Miles Per Gallon since it's fairly well-known and contextually relevant. Nor will I rip on the staggered spacing as the alternating fonts and colors help it flow. I am, however, a noted hater of IM lingo in URLs. It may work in Tiny URLs but, as part of a branded ad, it doesn't do it 4 me.

www.d-fend.us

This just goes to show that my rules are not hard and fast. I think this one works despite the dubs, alllowercase, dash, abbreviation and alternate domain. I like the play on words with "defend us." And since .us is not a popular TLD using the www helps reinforce that this is indeed an URL. And the dash helps the D-Fend abbreviation stand out. So, despite going 0 for 5, this URL comes up with some clutch defense to claim victory. Thanks to Jamie Forrest for the spot here!

emergedgtl.com

The URLeriffic Nate Gawel came across this company and its, er... concise URL. He speculated that maybe their slogan is "There's No 'I' in Digital." This URL is unlikely to emerge victorious.

DriveToSC.com

Peter Askew puts up SkewURL #26. Short and sweet, Leading Caps, and acceptable Abbreviation really help this URL drive home the point.

http://www.bbb.org

I won't begrudge the acronym here but the http and dubs are for the dogs, er... bees.

leye.com

My wife and I went out to a very nice Valentine's Day dinner last night. Everything on the menu looked good -- that is, except for this URL. The acronym stands for Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises. But their logo says Lettuce Enterain You Restaurants. And everyone just knows them as Lettuce Entertain You. I can forgive the decision to acronymize here as the full name is a mouthful but not sure why they picked LEYE. How hard could it have been to buy LEY.com? Dude's just got "Hey there" up there. And alllowercase only confuses the matter, making it harder to pick up one the fact that this, indeed, is an acronym/abbreviation -- not to mention, it's always weird to see "You" represented by a "Y" and not a "U." Whoever came up with this didn't have their head in the game. Or shall I say... they're losing green every time someone can't recall this Bad URL? Or perhaps... this URL is not humane, er... romaine. Or, this URL is just the tip of the iceberg. Or, this URL is a real tosser. Thank you, thank you. I'll be here all day.

Cash4Gold.com

Welcome to the 2009 edition of SuperURLs. This year advertisers shelled out $3 million for their 30 seconds of glory during the big game. But did they get all their bang for their buck with prominently displayed URLs? By and large, the answer was a resounding no. Some didn't even include URLs at all.

And then you had the advertiser whose brand was an URL. While their spot may have been memorable (Ed McMahon and MC Hammer in da house!), their URL is certainly forgettable. You all know my general disdain for URLs with abbreviations and there's no abbreviation worse than IM lingo. As a rule of thumb if you have to tell people how to type the URL, it's time to get a new one. Especially when you're playing in the SuperBowl with so many other good ads vying for attention.

Check out this exerpt from the Cash4Gold.com spot as the announcer says, "Cash The Number Four Dot Com." While it's not quite the mouthful our last spoken URL was, this one sure wasted more money. Methinks this was a case of $3 million 4 naught.

edgemonkeys.com

Here's a case where alllowercase overshadows a pretty good URL selection. The monkeys in this spot are definitely memorable. But the viewer is probably not expecting a URL having to do with them, rather thinking it would be Castrol-something. If I were the creative director here, when it came to careful URL display, I'd have been all over it like stink on a monkey.

visitPA.com

Unlike that URL from my last batch, this is a good use of the PA abbreviation... no-one will confuse what it stands for on a Pennsylvania license plate. Ain't that right, Pa?

www.paonebook.org

This one comes from URL-spotter Jamie Forrest, who played cat and mouse with this van to get an unobstructed view only to find out the URL was not PhoneBook.org, rather PAOneBook.org -- as in Pennsylvania One Book. Zoiks. More like PA Two Looks.

natgeotv.com

Here's another example of abbreviations gone wrong. Apparently National Geographic is trying to be more hip my shortening to Nat Geo. Sounds like a Steve Irwin stand in. And cramming all those letters in lowerrcase doesn't do anyone any favors. This URL should be released back into the wild.

www.kpd2paint.com

Here's one more from the astute Askew. While I'm glad these guys didn't use Kaleidoscope in the URL -- that's one nasty word -- they didn't do themselves any favors by tacking on the IM version of "to" and "paint." Don't know anything about their biz but from the name it seems like painting is only part of their capabilities so not sure why they want to brand their URL solely around that function. They need to start over with a blank canvas here.

www.holiday-inn.com/cmh-cityctr

Here's an eyechart for ya. First off, they own HolidayInn.com so no idea why they're using the Holiday-Inn.com. And the URL only goes downhill from there. A slash, an airport code, and a nonsensial abreviation. Toss in the dubs and alllowercase and if this were Bad URL Bingo we'd have a full-card winner. As Heidi Klum might say, when in comes to URLs, you're either In(n) or you're Out. Auf weidersehen.