I have a question about URL length and how Google treats it.

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

• 
  Steve Linn: I have a question about URL length and how Google treats it.  ;
  
  My URLS are parameter based:
  http://www.sitename.com/category/1111/restaurants.html?cityid=24&CityQuerytext=Chicago+IL
  
  I know that the best would be to use simple URLS:
  http://www.sitename.com/restaurants/durango
  
  I also know that Google ignores the parameters (everything after the ? in the URL)
  
  BUT the big question is this....
  Does Google take into account the total length of the URL when it considers my ranking...even thought it technically ignores everything after the ?
  
  So my competitors is short URL....and mine are parameter based
  
  are they simply better optimized because their URL is shorter than mine?  ;
  
  Their URL  ;
  http://www.sitename.com/restaurants/durango
  
  Mine ;
  http://www.sitename.com/category/1111/restaurants.html?cityid=24&CityQuerytext=Chicago+IL
  
  I do understand they are better optimized because they have better keywords in front of the parameter.  ;But ignoring that...just based on the total length.  ;
  
  What is your opinion?
  
  Cheers
  Steve
• 
  Jim Munro: I am not an expert, Steve, but I've done it both ways and think that Googlebot might generally take less notice of very long urls, no matter how useful they might be to your readers.
• 
  Patrick Rabanser: Google shouldn't treat a long URL different, many Websites use Dynamic URLs and still work well on Search Engines!
  So the length shouldn't be a big issue but there are many other problems with long URLs.
  
  Your competitor has a big advantage, because he has a "Speaking URL", that means a User could just read the URL and then he knows what the site is about.
  Google will treat "Speaking URLs" better it doesn't matter if your (Dynamic) URL has 10 signs or 50, it's just not user friendly.
  That's why their Website is better "optimized" then your Site.
  I hope this helped, if something is still unclear, feel free to ask!
• 
  Federico Sasso: > ...Google ignores the parameters (everything after the ? in the URL)
  I'm afraid this statement is not correct. Or did I miss the context you meant?
• 
  Shawn Cohen: +Federico Sasso ;is correct--a website I worked w/ launched a bunch of new products w/ brand new URLs and Google actually crawled a bunch of the URLs w/ parameters since we allowed Google to decide how to crawl them in webmaster tools.
• 
  Aamir Siddiqui: Maximum limit of URL should be 255 characters and Google read this kind of URL Limit.
• 
  Federico Sasso: +Aamir Siddiqui ;if I recall correctly RFC 2616 doesn't pose a limit, but Google supports the sitemaps protocol where the URL imposed limit is 2048 characters.
  
  It's also up to the device (browser, proxy, web server, OS, search engine, other tool...) to support longer ones, but for sure you can very easily find URLs longer than 255.
  The de-facto limit is around 2000 chars.
  
  [Update] here seomofo nearly 4 years ago pushed Google tools to the limit:
  http://www.seomofo.com/experiments/title-and-h1-of-this-post-but-for-the-sake-of-keyword-prominence-stuffing-im-going-to-mention-it-again-using-various-synonyms-stemmed-variations-and-of-coursea-big-fat-prominent-font-size-heres-the-stumper-that-stumped-me-what-is-the-max-number-of-chars-in-a-url-that-google-is-willing-to-crawl-and-index-for-whatever-reason-i-thought-i-had-read-somewhere-that-googles-limit-on-urls-was-255-characters-but-that-turned-out-to-be-wrong-so-maybe-i-just-made-that-number-up-the-best-answer-i-could-find-was-this-quote-from-googles-webmaster-trends-analyst-john-mueller-we-can-certainly-crawl-and-index-urls-over-1000-characters-long-but-that-doesnt-mean-that-its-a-good-practice-the-setup-for-this-experiment-is-going-to-be-pretty-simple-im-going-to-edit-the-permalink-of-this-post-to-be-really-really-long-then-im-going-to-see-if-google-indexes-it-i-might-even-see-if-yahoo-and-bing-index-iteven-though-no-one-really-cares-what-those-assholes-are-doing-url-character-limits-unrelated-to-google-the-question-now-is-how-many-characters-should-i-make-the-url-of-this-post-there-are-a-couple-of-sources-ill-reference-to-help-me-make-this-decision-the-first-is-this-quote-from-the-microsoft-support-pages-microsoft-internet-explorer-has-a-maximum-uniform-resource-locator-url-length-of-2083-characters-internet-explorer-also-has-a-maximum-path-length-of-2048-characters-this-limit-applies-to-both-post-request-and-get-request-urls-the-second-source-ill-cite-is-the-http-11-protocol-which-says-the-http-protocol-does-not-place-any-a-priori-limit-on-the-length-of-a-uri-servers-must-be-able-to-handle-the-uri-of-any-resource-they-serve-and-should-be-able-to-handle-uris-of-unbounded-length-if-they-provide-get-based-forms-that-could-generate-such-uris-a-server-should-return-414-request-uri-too-long-status-if-a-uri-is-longer.html
• 
  Jim Munro: I guess the takeaway for Steve Linn from this is that Federico's wonderful page might find it hard to rank for "2083-characters". :)
• 
  Steve Linn: Federico, what is your opinion on the URL length in terms of SEO?  ;Am I simply less optimized because my URL's are longer?  ;My URL string contains the same keywords as my competitors, and if Google does consider all parameters when indexing and weighting....then what is the weight or importance placed on overall URL length.  ;
  
  The big question is this....
  What will my return on investment be if I change my URL's to simple URL'S?
  
  Considering the site is built in RUBY and would require an "extensive rewire" according to the site developers.  ;
  
  How can I make a reasonable argument that this expense would be justified, and we should invest the money to change our URL structure.
  
  How can I test this theory, or research this further? ;
• 
  Federico Sasso: Steve, it's hard to say without having a crystal ball.
  
  I have to point out that your competitor's URLs are a little more optimized, even if you have the same keywords in the URL:
  yours are wasting real estate with "category/xxx" tokens that do not add value to the semantic, just might confuse the context (but probably SE are well aware of such patterns).
  I'm not a big fan of correlation studies, but it might be worth mentioning some of them - sorry, no links at hand - evidenced a better positive correlation with ranking when keywords were closer to the left in the URL.
  
  I never developed in Ruby (on Rail, you mean?), so I can't judge your developers' statement.
  If I were you I would tackle the issue no matter what, but I am very stubborn and not necessarily the sharpest knife in the drawer when it comes to ROI.
  
  My guess is your return of investment would be very little, and it would be more productive to concentrate on lower hanging fruits.