Why does Twitter use a hash and exclamation mark in URLs, and how do they rewrite search URLs?

ajax twitter fragment-identifier
Crashalot picture Crashalot · Jan 19, 2011 · Viewed 13.9k times · Source

We understand the hash is for AJAX searches, but the exclamation mark? Anyone know?

Also, the "action" attribute for their search form points to "/search," but when you conduct a search, the hash exclamation mark appears in the URL. Are they simply redirecting from "/search" to "/#!/search"?

Note: the second part of the q remains unanswered: That is, are they redirecting the user from "/search" to "/#!/search", or do they send the user to "/search" and use JS on the page to rewrite the URL? – Crashalot Jan 26 at 23:51

Thanks!

Answer

meder omuraliev picture meder omuraliev · Jan 19, 2011

It's become the de facto standard that Google has established to ensure consistency and make ajax urls crawlable.

See http://code.google.com/web/ajaxcrawling/docs/getting-started.html

I believe they are using history.pushState. You can do history.back() in the console and it'll lead you back to the page.

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