I recently saw a comment about Pathauto and started writing a really long reply that seemed more valuable to share here.
Basically one of the questions people have is "Why should I use Pathauto? If I don't care about SEO is there any other reason?"
This is a valid question to me. There is some indication that users don't look at the URL bar. During the Usability testing at UMN we never noticed people looking at the URL bar in the eye-tracking data. But some people certainly do look at the URL bar - people who like "hackable urls" do
Hackable URLs
I use it extensively to create "hackable URLs" that are valuable to a user. A "hackable url" or "index alias" is the feature on a site where you have a post and then users can remove the title down to the previous URL element and get the other posts from that month, one more layer for the year, and one more for that user since forever. See - fun! I even made a movie about it:
Site Credibility Prior to the Click
I frequently get URLs sent to me via email and IM. Compare these two URLs:
http://drupalcampcolorado.org/node/38
vs.
http://drupalcampcolorado.org/content/our-sponsors
Which one are you more likely to click on? Which one helps you understand what content you are going to get before you even get there?
