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Google’s John Mueller answers the question on whether URL length matters for SEO in a new video from the #AskGooglebot series. He also explains the situations where the URL length might be taken into consideration.
How does Google evaluate URLs?
According to Google, URLs are treated as identifiers, and the length of the URLs doesn’t matter. As a personal recommendation, John advises that URLs should be kept under 1,000 characters. In addition, when it comes to SEO, the number of slashes in URLs seems to have no impact.
Here’s John Mueller’s explanation from the video:
“The direct answer is No, the URL length doesn’t matter. We use URLs as identifiers, it doesn’t matter how long they are. Personally, I try to keep them shorter than 1000 characters, but that’s just to make monitoring easier. The number of slashes in there also doesn’t matter.”
Do shorter URLs have an advantage?
According to Google’s John Mueller, short URLs may have a slight advantage in some situations. This is when Google has to choose between different versions of the same page (often referred to as Canonicalisation). If Google discovers a URL version that is shorter and cleaner, they are more likely to select it as the main version and show it in Google SERP.
Key Takeaways
When it comes to Google Search, neither the URL length nor the slashes have an impact on site rankings. As advised by Google, choose a URL structure that works best for you and stick to it. Make sure you have a proper site hierarchy and folder structure, without worrying much about the URL length.
You can see the complete video on “Does URL Length Matter?” here:
