Max length of url?

Hi,

Does anyone know whether there's a recommended max length of URL for SEO purposes?

Long URLs are truncated in the SERPS I think, but who knows whether they count against you in the ranking algorithms...

I remember reading that short is better from a usability and user clickthrough perspective too - anyone got any hard figures on this?

Cat

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http://web.soothed.com.au/
Web design for natural therapists

There isn't one!

URL "length" is NOTHING at all to do with SEO!

Browsers do have their own constraints on the length of URIs though however as this is in excess of 2000 character it is unlikely to be an issue.

HOWEVER there is something to be considered for creating "keyword URLs"

http://www.webmaster-talk.com/seo-talk-forum/155621-new-tested-url-structur-seo-2008-a.html#post777529

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Chris.
So long, and thanks for all the fish.
http://webmaster-talk.eu/

Cheers Chris,

I don't think you can categorically say that URL "length" is nothing to do with SEO, as no one knows the details of the algorithms. It seems that very long URLs could perhaps be penalised for keyword spamming, although to be honest, I doubt it.

The reason I ask is I'm doing some improvements to my CMS. Currently it autogenerates URLs for certain pages depending on the title tag, but this doesn't always do as great a job as I'd like. So I'd like to allow the user an option to override the URL (just like wordpress etc). Most of my users will not have a clue what constitutes a good URL, so I'd like to add some kind of guidelines. Length I feel should be one of those - shorter is better in my opinion, but how short? Hence my question....

Reading around a bit more last night, 75 characters seems to be the limit for usability and clickthrough (Neilson), so I'll probably go with that.

Cat

--
http://web.soothed.com.au/
Web design for natural therapists

It is a popular pre-supposition/myth that keyworded URLs/domain names are VITAL or important for SEO. They aren't! Only Yahoo! pays anything more than a passing interest in the URL structure/folder names.

I had a test running for a long while where I had a page on a site with a particular word in the folder/page name and linked to it with different anchor text. The page appeared for the anchor text in all SEs but only in Yahoo! for the UL word.

Unfortunately the test was negated when a "scraper" picked up the URI and linked it using the URI as the anchor text. After that, it appeared in all SEs.

The problem with many self proclaimed SEO "experts" is they do not test anything or do not know how too test. They use deductive reasoning to demonstrate their point.
Deductive reasoning for anyone who doesn't know, is when someone reaches a conclusion such as:
"This cat is black. Therefore all cats are black"
Then of course because their logic in stating such things appears sound to the masses who promptly repeat this over and over and eventually it becomes a recognised "fact".

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Chris.
So long, and thanks for all the fish.
http://webmaster-talk.eu/

forgot to add (getting old )

It follows, (using inductive reasoning) that If the URL text is not that important then the length is equally unimportant.

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Chris.
So long, and thanks for all the fish.
http://webmaster-talk.eu/

I can see one possible scenario where a very long URL might hurt rankings, and that's the situation alluded to by Chris in that other forum post, where the URL is used for the link text. (Chris - loved the example you gave!) If you have a long URL then it's more likely to get truncated, resulting in your important keywords getting lost.

Even if it isn't truncated then having a long URL - and hence long link text - might dilute your keywords.

I'd have thought the effect would be pretty minor though. As Chris says, keywords in URLs don't appear to affect rankings directly.

Cheers,
Matt

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Matt Doyle, Elated
3rd Edition of my jQuery Mobile book out now! Learn to build mobile web apps. Free sample chapter: http://store.elated.com/