7. The URL rescue process of claim 1 , wherein the URL rescue process further comprises attempting a third URL rescue strategy that comprises: extracting from the invalid URL an item identifier that identifies a first catalog item; looking up in a mapping table a second catalog item that is related to the first catalog item; and returning to the user device, in response to the URL request, a description of the second catalog item.
1. A computer-implemented URL rescue process, said URL rescue process comprising: receiving, by a hosting site, a URL (Uniform Resource Locator) request from a user device, said URL request specifying a URL, the URL request including an address of the hosting site and a character string referencing a content location on the hosting web site; detecting that the URL is invalid by detecting that the content location is not found on the hosting site; in response to detecting that the URL is invalid, attempting, as a first URL rescue strategy, to repair the invalid URL through URL modification; determining that the attempt to repair the invalid URL through URL modification has failed to produce a modified URL that resolves to a valid content location on the hosting site; and executing an alternate URL rescue strategy that does not attempt to repair the invalid URL, said alternate URL rescue strategy comprising: extracting from the invalid URL a set of one or more search terms for executing one or more searches, wherein extracting the set of one or more search terms comprises using delimiters in the invalid URL to identify a substring of the invalid URL, and comparing the substring to entries in a selection list to determine whether to use the substring as a search term, said extracting resulting in a selection of less than all text of said character string for use in executing the one or more searches; executing one or more searches of content of the hosting site using the one or more extracted search terms, wherein executing the one or more searches comprises applying the one or more search terms to an index of the content of the hosting site; incorporating results of the one or more searches into a page; and returning the page to the user device in response to the URL request; said URL rescue process implemented by a server system that comprises one or more computing devices.