{"id":16845,"date":"2021-11-02T08:57:50","date_gmt":"2021-11-02T08:57:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.improvemysearchranking.com\/?p=16845"},"modified":"2024-10-31T11:39:56","modified_gmt":"2024-10-31T11:39:56","slug":"length-url-affect-seo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.improvemysearchranking.com\/length-url-affect-seo\/","title":{"rendered":"Does URL Length Affect SEO?"},"content":{"rendered":"

How does the length of a URL affect search engine optimization and search rankings of a web page?<\/span><\/p>\n

The common belief is that a URL should be short and without too much crawl depth. However, is it just a myth, or does a lengthy URL really have a negative impact on SEO? Moreover, if the length of a URL does not have any effect, how long can we make a URL without having any impact?<\/span><\/p>\n

This question regarding the length of URLs was just posed to Google\u2019s John Mueller in a recent Ask Googlebot video on YouTube.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cDo shorter URLs actually make an impact compared to long URLs or is this just another SEO myth?\u201c<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Google\u2019s John Mueller clarified that the length of a URL does not affect SEO in the way that most people think. That\u2019s because Google simply uses URLs as identifiers.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe direct answer is no. The URL length doesn\u2019t matter. We use URLs as identifiers, it doesn\u2019t matter how long they are.\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Having said that, John also shared his personal preference to keep URLs less than 1,000 characters.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cPersonally, I try to keep them shorter than 1,000 characters, but that\u2019s just to make monitoring easier.\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

This advice is in line with what John Mueller shared back in 2019 \u2014 that it is recommended to keep <\/span>URLs less than 1,000 characters<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

In addition to the length of the URLs, John also mentioned that <\/span>\u201cthe number of slashes in there also doesn\u2019t matter.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

According to John Mueller, it means that there are no benefits of a flat URL structure (with fewer subdirectories or slashes in the URL).<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

No effects of long URLs whatsoever?<\/b><\/h2>\n

 <\/p>\n

So does this mean that there are absolutely zero effects of long URLs?<\/span><\/p>\n

John highlighted that there is one instance when the length of the URL can become a factor and have an effect, i.e., canonicalization.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m currently only aware of one part of our systems where the URL length plays a role\u2014 that part is canonicalization.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Canonicalization is what happens when we find multiple copies of a page on your website and we have to pick one URL to use for indexing.\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

If we find a shorter and clearer URL, our systems tend to select that one.\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

He further clarified that canonicalization has nothing to do with rankings \u2014 but the appearance of search snippets.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis does not affect ranking. It\u2019s purely a matter of which URL is shown in the search.\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

John summarized his suggestions in the following words:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSo, to sum up, when it comes to search rankings, neither the URL length nor the number of slashes matter. Use a URL structure that works for you and which you can keep for the long run.\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How does the length of a URL affect search engine optimization and search rankings of a web page? The common belief is that a URL should be short and without too much crawl depth. However, is it just a myth, or does a lengthy URL really have a negative impact on SEO? Moreover, if the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":23301,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_oct_exclude_from_cache":false,"inline_featured_image":false},"categories":[33,38,35],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nDoes URL Length Affect SEO? | IMSR<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"How does the length of a URL affect search engine optimisation and search rankings? 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