This post is a rant. I’m only moderately pulling my punches. Yes, it’s probably about you. You have been warned.
Many people have the Google search engine web page set as their default page. That’s fine, and not a terrible idea. When you want to find something, and don’t know where to go for it, Google’s a fantastic gateway.
What Google is not is a place to put in a URL (a web page “address”). If someone provides you a URL, and you put it into the Google search bar, you are asking Google to search for that URL. This is, in the technical sense, not going to get you want you want. Unfortunately, because Google is so expansive, it often does get people what they want. This builds a bad habit that reared it’s hideous, deformed head lately.
If you punch the wedding website URL into Google…you get links to this blog. That’s because I’ve mentioned the wedding here, and Google is also picking up on the “McC3D.com” part of the URL. You won’t get the wedding website itself, because it doesn’t index (i.e. Google doesn’t pick it up in its catalog of the internet). The blog does index.
This was presented to me as a “problem with the wedding website” that “people couldn’t get to.” When I hear those words, I become alarmed. My webserver’s pretty important to me, and if something’s not working correctly, I want to fix it as quickly as possible. But when I find out that the only thing wrong is people not understanding how to properly use their web browser, I get upset. Very upset. I don’t particularly care to have technical issues pinned on me that are A) not technical and B) not my fault.
The anatomy of a web browser:
This is the proper way to use your web browser.
In closing:
Though I understand and am in full agreement with what you are saying here in regards to the distinction between web browser and website, I could not pass up the opportunity to point out that Google can be your web browser if you are using Google Chrome. Not the website Google of course, but still a Google product. In a recent related survey video I watched, the existence of Google Chrome has generally only served to further confuse people in regard to the relationship between web browser and website, particularly where google is concerned.
You are, of course, absolutely correct. I thought about mentioning this in the post, but the post is really more aimed at people who still think Internet Explorer is ‘the internet.’ People savvy enough to be using Chrome almost certainly will already know all of this.
What’s an url? I have a cousin Earl. Is that who you mean? Am I supposed to call him about your wedding? I didn’t know you even knew Earl.
I can hurt you.
Chrome for the win…
But yeah I love explaining just this topic to lots of people. ::sighs::
My only beef with Chrome is its lack of ad blocking support to the same extent as Firefox. As soon as that changes I’ll give it another shot.