Why do some websites add "Slugs" to the end of URLs?

Posted by Dave Webb on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Dave Webb
Published on 2008-09-06T13:00:32Z Indexed on 2010/05/03 20:58 UTC
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Many websites, including this one, add what are apparently called slugs - descriptive but as far as I can tell useless bits of text - to the end of URLs.

For example, the URL the site gives for this question is:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/47427/why-do-some-websites-add-slugs-to-the-end-of-urls

But the following URL works just as well:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/47427/

Is the point of this text just to somehow make the URL more user friendly or are there some other benefits?

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