Is slugs in the URL now a good thing?

[Inevo]

Hi,

Until now I've adviced a lot of web shops to avoid having long URL structures for their categories and products (aka. remove the useless slugs).

Recently I discovered that Google started rolling out more and more results that looks like these screenshots:

http://filer.crenia.no/McDn & http://filer.crenia.no/McYO (look at the URL in the SERP)

I'm assuming the slugs are a vital part of creating these SERP results. Personally, I also think they look better and favor them compared to the old SERPs.

Does anyone have any experience with these, what impact they have or any reason not to add slugs to URLs again?

[SteveBrumpton]

Hello Ignitas,

I recently cleared 2 layers of slugs from the url of a page I was optimising.  I changed it from domain.co.uk/sub-folder/slug/key-phrase/ to just domain.co.uk/key-phrase/ and after a couple of weeks since Google indexed the change I've not seen any major uplift.  Still hovering between 7th and 9th place.

I suspect in time it may help as it will be easier for people to add deep links to my landing page with a simpler URL.  I think now people just link to the homepage as the full url is too long to include but thats just a theory.

I agree with you that shorter ones look better and when I look at competitors who hold top positions for my phrases they almost all have shorter slug-free urls so I'm continuing to move that way even if I haven't seen the ranking increases to back it up yet.

Steve