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: November 14, 2025

Nov 14, 2025 - 10:00 am
Search Video Recaps

Search News Buzz Video Recap: Movemeber Google Update, Opal AI Spam, Discover Spam Fix, Copilot Search, Google Image Ads & More

Nov 14, 2025 - 8:01 am
Google Ads

Google Ads Advertiser Suspension Improvements: Faster & More Accurate

Nov 14, 2025 - 7:51 am
Google Ads

Google: Don't Close Your Google Ads Account To Make LSAs Work

Nov 14, 2025 - 7:41 am
Google

Google Shopping With AI Mode Comparisons, Call Store, Track Price & Agentic Checkout

Nov 14, 2025 - 7:31 am
Google Ads

Google Ads Brings Brand Inclusions To Standard Shopping Campaigns (NOPE)

Nov 14, 2025 - 7:21 am
 
Previous Story: Google: Use rel=sponsored For Affiliate Links If Possible