Google's John Mueller said on Twitter that the place where your URL structure matters most is likely with international websites and sites that have sections of adult oriented content. It will help Google figure out the site better and know how to segment or filter elements if you have the proper URL structure.
With international sites, he said sites on a gTLD with country subdirectories, having that structure helps Google determine which parts of the site is targeted to which countries or languages.
With adult content on parts of your site, having separate directories can help Google understand each section and then filter out in SafeSearch those sections only and not the whole site.
John implied that "context" is not implied in your URL structure always but more often is implied in your internal linking, anchor text and content on your page.
Here are those tweets:
2 places where URL structure does matter:
— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) February 25, 2021
- international sites (on a gTLD with country subdirectories)
- sites with some adult content (use separate directories so we can filter the section it easier)
Forum discussion at Twitter.
