How Long Before a URL is 'Too Long'

[NiallSmith]

Hello Mozzers,

Two of the sites I manage are currently in the process of merging into one site and as a result, many of the URLs are changing.

Nevertheless (and I've shared this with my team), I was under the impression that after a certain point, Google starts to discount the validity of URLs that are too long.

With that, if I were to have a URL that was structured as follows, would that be considered 'too long' if I'm trying to get the content indexed highly within Google?

Here's an example: yourdomain.com/content/content-directory/article

and in some cases, it can go as deep as:

yourdomain.com/content/content-directory/organization/article.

Albeit there is no current way for me to shorten these URLs is there anything I can do to make sure the content residing on a similar path is still eligible to rank highly on Google? How would I go about achieving this?

[CyrilWilson]

Technically, Google will index URLs up to 2047 characters in length. I am sure you will be having a sitemap too and sitemap protocol suggests URL length must be less than 2,048 characters.

I personally will try different site architecture to keep URL as short as possible.

[gcdtechnologies]

Hi there, the maximum URL length is around 2,000 characters. This is for browsers rather than Google. That said, shorter URLs are best practice for usability reasons.

Neither of the examples you give seem overly long. While it's a good idea to avoid unnecessary folders or words or characters, it's good usability practice to reflect the site's structure and navigation in the URL.

Good luck!