espn.com/404

Have you seen the new espn.com commercials? I was giddy with excitement at the thought of hackable URLs on a site as large as ESPN’s, but much like prom night, I was left disappointed. What could have been a great campaign that would encourage users to use the URL as a navigation device, ended up being a classic demonstration of the divide between Marketing and IT departments.

So where did they go wrong? It’s a long answer that starts with some simple Google stats. Let’s run a Takedown, breaking down stats for the official URL used in commercials and marketing for three big brands: ESPN, JCPenney, and BestBuy.

The number of pages that Google sees for a site is a good number to keep an occasional eye on for any site that you manage. You can peek at it by using the “site:” argument in Google as in “site:jcp.com“. Taking a look at these stats, ESPN’s numbers are woefully low, and JCPenney’s are just plain egregious.

Come on, Mark, be real. JCPenney has way more than 4 pages.

They most definitely do. Although you see espn.com and jcp.com in every commercial and every piece of marketing, those aren’t their actual URLs. Have a look for yourself. Click on espn.com and you arrive at espn.go.com. Click on any link from the jcp.com home page, and suddenly you’re on www.jcpenney.com.

I don’t want you to think I’m trying to pull the wool over your eyes, so let’s try this again with their real URLs.

Well that fixes ESPN’s numbers; 5.9 million pages seems more believable. JCPenney’s numbers are still broken, but how they caught a bad case of the Endeca is a story for another time.

So what does the 5 million page discrepancy between espn.com and espn.go.com have to do with the commercial? Everything. Here was my thought process the first time I tried one of these URLs.

– Hm, that’s enough Facebook stalking for the 11a hour.
– Let’s go waste time on ESPN.
– Wow, the Knicks are embarrassing.
– Oh, let me try that “slash” thing from the commercial!
– Okay, delete everything after the “.com”
– Type in “/fantasybaseball”. Hm, page not found.
– Okay, delete everything after the “.com”
– Type in “/rumors”. Hm, page not found.
– Okay, delete everything after the “.com”
– Type in “/trades”. Hm, page not found.
– This blows!
– I should check my Wall—it’s been a while.

If I open up a blank browser and type espn.com/fantasybaseball, I’m whisked straight to the topic. The problem is, once I arrive at the site, the URL is changed to games.espn.go.com/flb/welcome. Try removing everything after the slash and typing “trades” or “rumors”? A big fat 404.

espn.com/fantasybaseball – Works
espn.go.com/fantasybaseball – Fails

espn.com/rumors – Works
espn.go.com/rumors – Fails

espn.com/trades – Works
espn.go.com/trades – Fails

See a pattern here? The redirect to a URL reflecting the now dead-in-the-water Go Network introduces a fatal weakness in the campaign.

I chose ESPN, BestBuy, and JCPenney to examine because they’re all utterly crippled by their abounding content. Most notable on BestBuy and JCPenney, you can sense the weight of the content in their overloaded site navigation and ghoulish page URLs. Even clever campaigns like this (I’m an unabashed W+K fanboi) are handcuffed by kludgy redirects and a lack of communication between departments.

It’s a shame, because for every successful use of a “slash” URL this campaign triggers, I’d bet they’re creating twice as many Page Not Founds and just as many frustrated fans.