Can a URL be too long?

[seopo]

Hi all,

We are looking at our URL structure for some of our sites and have been inspecting the length.

For example would a URL folder structure of 6 folders and with 77 characters be too long and get penalised in the SERPs or would it be irrelevant? Are the any other factors I may not have considerered that should influence my decicision?

Thanks,


Richard

[cw1865]

the shorter the better

[dburdon]

Folder spamming?

[DoneInStyle]

Six folders? Why?

If google doesn't penalize you, your visitors sure will. For instance, a visitor actually likes you and emails a link to a friend, who clicks it and ends up at a 404 since the link was too damn long. Friend says "Hell with this!" and goes elsewhere.

There is no earthly reason to go that deep.

[SEO]

3 levels deep is the most you want to go... Keep URL's short and sweet... With that many folders it is possible that you could set off a "red flag"... with Google especially.

[qh4dotcom]

Many people will not bother to type URLs that are too long into their browsers meaning that you lose visitors

[gsport11]

I'd add just one more reason to keep the URLs short: In the search engines, long URLs are truncated. Consequently someone searching for your page may not be able to see the actual name of your page and you lose the potential benefit of having a keyword bolded.

[seopo]

Thanks for the comments

1. To add to this Google has indexed the URLs fully within the SERPs and they can be seen from beginning to end.

[seopo]

<Accidently submitted - continued from above>

2. Although the main reason is for SEO purposes - I tried to do it logically with the folder structure same way that I would do it locally

Is there any research or testing on this or is it primarily peoples gut feelings?

[dreras]

One other issue to take into account is if you ever want to get involved with Google Adwords. Adwords has a specific policy about the length of the urls it displays.

For example, the url that actually displays on your ad can only be roughly 30 characters (not sure what the exact character # is...).

You can set it up so that the display url is your homepage, but when the ad is clicked it goes to a sub page, or landing page, but that sub page url also has character restrictions on it (I think its a pretty large # though).

I would be mainly concerned with the homepage of your site not fitting in their character limit. I recently setup a new campaign for a client and was barely able to list the homepage. I sneaked in by one character. If their homepage was any longer I wouldn't have known what to do.

Just something to think about for the long run. You never know where your marketing is going in the future and with long urls you could get burned.

[SEO]

There is another website that takes "directory structure" 6 - 7 levels deep.

dmoz.org -

Here is an example of a 7 deep linking structure with roughly 100 characters in the URL:
Open Directory - Recreation: Pets: Dogs: Rescues and Shelters: North America: United States: North Carolina

Page Rank is valid all the way through to the 6th directory level /United_States/ - 90 characters in URL - PR3

Google loves dmoz...

I can definitely see your SEO reasoning behind this...

Considering the fact that "Google has indexed the URLs fully within the SERPs and they can be seen from beginning to end", I would say "Run With It"... but be careful.

I said in my previous post "3 levels deep is the most you want to go", I said that for safety reasons. That is a "safe" directory structure... You basically can't go wrong with it... However... Being "average" will not bring us greatness will it...?

Do what it takes... If you crash and bum - do it again, but differently... But do it with "Your Own Websites"...

I do a lot of experimentation with my own sites... I have had a few booted from Google... but I also have others that completely dominate the first 3 pages of Google for a particular search term (10 out of the first 30 natural rankings for a competitive search term point to my site). Let me tell you... It feels great when you do something "out of the box" that really works. It doesn't really matter what other people say you can or can't do... Look at those who are 'DOING IT' and learn from them.

dmoz is doing it... Therefore... If you do it correctly (don't make any rash mistakes)... So Can You...

[deepsand]

As it's your host who bears the burden of parsing the URL, and locating and returning the requested data, SEs & their spiders don't give a damn about the length of a URL or the depth of the directory tree.

As for what is displayed by the user's browser and/or GUI, in the Task Bar, the Favorites/Bookmarks Title field, etc., and by SEs, in the Title field, you have control of this by way of each page's Title tag. You should ensure that this tag is user friendly.

Additional considerations include the aforementioned possible limitations re. max. field length allowed by 3rd party applications, such as online advertising publishers and client e-mail services. With respect to the latter, you yourself can easily avoid URL wrapping problems by using an Anchor link complete with a display name, such as Can a URL be too long? rather than simply "http://www.webproworld.com/search-engine-optimization-forum/69707-can-url-too-long.html" . As for what your users might do, as you've no control over what they copy and where they paste, such that even the shortest URL can end up being wrapped, I'd not worry about that.

[pervezalam_mzn]

it can be, but it should be short for easy to remember and in type, so if it will be short then it will much better comparison to long url. Always try to choose a short URL



Cheers

Pervez Alam
Website Design | Website Development | Graphic Design

[Janna122003]

Originally Posted by seopo

Hi all,

We are looking at our URL structure for some of our sites and have been inspecting the length.

For example would a URL folder structure of 6 folders and with 77 characters be too long and get penalised in the SERPs or would it be irrelevant? Are the any other factors I may not have considerered that should influence my decicision?

Thanks,


Richard

6 folders is already deep. It would be hard for spiders to crawl the folders.

[amitgupta007_99]

A short URL and use of smart folder names, file names and good content will do the needful for U.

Amit P Gupta
Web Strategist

[kronikmedia]

I am not sure what is the exact limit but I suppose there must be one. In practice however I have seen some fairly large URL's and have never come across any of my sites where I got an error for URL being too long. For usability reasons it is best to stick to something that is readable.

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by Janna122003

6 folders is already deep. It would be hard for spiders to crawl the folders.

As above stated, given that it's your host who bears the burden of parsing the URL, and locating and returning the requested data, SEs & their spiders don't give a damn about the length of a URL or the depth of the directory tree.