Why Chinese URLs are long strings of numbers

When it comes to URLs, China has a preference for numbers over letters. 

For a large majority of Chinese people, particularly those who don't speak a foreign language, numbers are far easier to remember than Latin characters, particularly when a series of digits translate to homophones of easy-to-remember words. 

Writing in the New Republic, Chris Beam highlights a number of examples. Take the homophone for massive e-commerce site Alibaba, 1688.com. The numbers in the URL are pronounced yao-liu-ba-ba, which basically sounds like Alibaba. Or there's 51job.com, a popular job hunting website in the Mainland, which sounds like “I want a job”—since the number five is pronounced “wu,” which sounds like “wo,” and the number one is pronounced “yao” which means “want.”

The system works both ways, for Chinese companies who want to appeal to both domestic international audiences and therefore don’t want to alienate foreign users with unfamiliar characters, numbers are a decent compromise.