Glossary · Étiqueter et diffuser

Slug

The slug is the part of a short link that comes after the domain and identifies the destination: in *example.com/sale*, it is *sale*. It is the only piece of the link you choose, and therefore the only one a reader can understand before clicking.

Dire d’où vient un clic avant qu’il ne soit trop tard pour le savoir. The forty terms of the trade

What it is for

A readable slug gets clicked more, simply because it announces where you are going. On printed material it is also what makes the link speakable out loud and copyable without error — which a string of seven random characters never is.

How it is chosen

Letters, digits, hyphens, never accents, spaces or dots. Short, pronounceable, unambiguous by ear. And unique on its domain: two links cannot share the same address.

The classic mistake

Recycling a slug for a new campaign. The old materials still exist — a flyer, a video, an old message — and keep sending people to the new destination, mixing two pushes into the same total.

Tracking link

The question people ask too late

Can I reuse last year's address?

No. The materials carrying it still exist, and they will send their clicks into the new campaign.

A published link cannot be taken back. It is the only thing in marketing that is truly final.

What happens between the click and the destination

What Subtraq does with it

A Subtraq slug accepts letters, digits, hyphens and underscores, up to 64 characters, and refuses the product's reserved paths. A link named *login* would make the sign-in page unreachable: the check happens at creation, not at click time.


Read next

Un terme seul ne sert à rien. Voici ceux qui le rendent utilisable.

301 and 302 redirects

Read the definition

Short links and domains

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« Slug », une fois posé sur de vraies ventes

A badly placed label cannot be fixed afterwards: the link is already published. The builder writes the address without a syntax error, and the preview shows what the report will make of it.

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