Google: URL Length Is Not A Ranking Factor

Feb 5, 2020 - 8:17 am 10 by

Google Tape Measure

Google's John Mueller had to say on Twitter that "URL length is not a ranking fraction." He was told that a CMS autogenerates URLs that are often longer than what is recommended for SEO. Now, what is recommended for SEO in terms of length?

Maybe for usability, keeping your URLs short and sweet is a good thing. But Google can crawl and process pretty long URLs.

Here is John's tweet:

I mean, Google can handle a URLs as long as 2,000 characters or so. Now while Google prefers to show the shorter version of the URL, if available, it doesn't mean Google cannot index and rank longer URLs. Meaning, if your URL says .com/google-url-length-seo.html?tons-of-parameters-goes-here, Google will likely canonicalize it to .com/google-url-length-seo.html and remove the added on parameters.

Forum discussion at Twitter.

 

Popular Categories

The Pulse of the search community

Search Video Recaps

 
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Search Forum Recap

Daily Search Forum Recap: July 4, 2025

Jul 4, 2025 - 10:00 am
Search Video Recaps

Search News Buzz Video Recap: Google June 2025 Core Update, Search Volatility, Insights Report, Ads & More

Jul 4, 2025 - 8:01 am
Bing Search

Bing Search Tests Zoomable & Sticky Related Searches

Jul 4, 2025 - 7:51 am
Google

Google AI Mode Can Respond In Non-English Languages

Jul 4, 2025 - 7:41 am
Bing Search

Bing Tests Local Place Listings In Green

Jul 4, 2025 - 7:31 am
Google Ads

Google Merchant Center Gains Automatic Shipping Updates

Jul 4, 2025 - 7:21 am
Previous Story: Google: Use rel=sponsored For Affiliate Links If Possible