Why are page titles on some websites clickable URLs?
Why on sites like Stack Overflow, Techcrunch, Smashing Magazine, etc. are the page titles (i.e. the text at the top of the page) clickable URLs that redirect to the same page that the user is on?
Some examples:
I believe that this does not effect SEO as search engines ignore internal links.
Is it for usability purposes?
More than anything, it provides a link to the default state of the page.
For example, for this very stack overflow page it is a user can get here through any of the following non-default links:
- Why are Page Titles on some websites (including Stack Overflow) Clickable URLs?
- https://stackoverflow.com/questions/904381#foobar
- https://stackoverflow.com/questions/904381?sort=date
While the default link is actually:
If users are unable to get to the default state, they end up bookmarking or emailing the non-default link which propagates to new users and the problem just multiplies.
Clicking on the title link of the post will restore the default state and strip off any query parameters (?sort=date), named anchors (#foobar) and fix the story slug (/why-are-page-titles/...).