The Age and SMH have joined News.com in embedding story names in their URLs.

So at The Age before it was
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/11/01/1099262789668.html — now it’s
http://www.theage.com.au/news/National/TAB-locks-superglued/2004/11/02/1099262825340.html

News.com used to have stuff like
http://news.com.com/2100-1028_3-5435183.html — but now it’s
http://news.com.com/Fahrenheit+94711+expands+election-eve+pay-TV+airing/2100-1028_3-5435183.html

(Note how the slash in the News.com article screws-up the text embedded in the URL.)

It’s probably good for the search engines but it’s hopeless for passing URLs via email, as they now spill out over more than one line.

(If they want to maximise hits, what the Fairfax should prioritise is countering Google News’s opinion of The Age and SMH being subscriber only.)

PS. Thursday 8am. For those of us who want to quote SMH/Age URLs to people, you can still chop out all the embedded text, and replace it with “articles” so the example above becomes: http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/11/02/1099262825340.html