Should your Blog URL’s be shorter?
Search Engine Round Table yesterday posted about a Google Groups thread where a Google employee, JounMu, hinted that Google may not like URL’s which are too long.
The URL which was mentioned is :
http://www.gadgetguy.com.au/small-kitchen-appliances-toaster-kettle-coffee-machine-blender-juicer-channel7-sunrise-australia-42.html
Clearly this URL stinks of someone trying to squeeze in as many keywords as they can in the address bar. How does this affect bloggers? Well, depending on your blogs permalink structure, your URL could be a little long if you have a long post title. For example, with WordPress the default permalink structure is http://www.bloggingtips.com/?p=123 however the most common structures are ones which include keywords from the post eg. http://www.bloggingtips.com/2008/06/24/sample-post/ or http://www.bloggingtips.com/sample-post/.
If you are using one of the latter structures then WordPress will break your post title down and and replace spaces with hyphens. For example, the title of this post is ‘Should your Blog URL’s be shorter?’ therefore the permalink structure which is automatically generated by WordPress is http://www.bloggingtips.com/2008/06/24/should-your-blog-urls-be-shorter/. WordPress does allow you to change this link very easily.
This particular URL isn’t too long so there is no need to shorten it however there are instances when you might want to edit the permalink structure which has been generated. For example, if I was to review the upcoming Xbox 360 game ‘Gears of War 2′ I might call the post ‘Does Gears of War 2 live up to it’s hype?’.
This would generate a permalink structure of http://www.mysite.com/does-gears-of-war-2-live-up-to-its-hype. Of course, I would probably get better traffic from the search engines from changing this to http://www.mysite.com/gears-of-war-2-review as it targets the keyword ‘review’ and the game title. The URL is shorter too so Google may send more traffic because of that too.
Should we be shortening our URL’s?
As usual, Google are keeping their cards close to their chest on this one. I believe that shorter URL’s may be favoured over longer ones because of webmasters trying to get extra traffic from placing lots of keywords in their address. In the past Google have had to change their algorithms to stop people manipulating their SERPS. Of course, no one really knows for sure if shorter URL’s are favoured but it’s something to keep in mind next time you write a blog post with a long title 
David Shaw | June 24th, 2008 at 9:29 am #
I have looked into this a bit in the past.
I aim for around 4-5 words as a max in my URLs
Kevin Muldoon (Post Author) | June 24th, 2008 at 9:30 am #
Webmasters seem to be divided on whether shorter urls really help. Some say that as long as you are not putting spam in your keywords etc then you shouldn’t be penalized.
Joseph Z. | June 24th, 2008 at 9:59 am #
Google may be keeping quiet, but they shorten their Blogger post URLs (at least somewhat). A post on my blog called “8 Simple Things You can Do to Decrease Your Pollen Exposure” gets the post URL “http://blog.allergybegone.com/2008/04/8-simple-things-you-can-do-to-decrease.html”
None of my other post URLs have been shortened so far.
Todd Andrews | June 24th, 2008 at 10:19 am #
I’m still waiting for solid insight into Google’s preference on this one, but shorter URL’s are a good consideration.
Internet Business Ideas | June 24th, 2008 at 11:22 am #
I noticed Google shortening my urls too.
I think it is good, it will take the best out everyone
Tanny
My Internet Home Business
Vered | June 24th, 2008 at 1:28 pm #
Wow. I never pay any attention to any of these things.
Guess I’d better start.
Edward Lomax | June 24th, 2008 at 5:11 pm #
I’ve often wondered about this. My titles sometimes can get a little wordy. I guess I’m going to have to try to shorten them up a bit.
Just another thing to worry about I guess.
Cassie | June 24th, 2008 at 6:28 pm #
Even if Google didn’t put any weight on URL length, it’s still good practice to keep them within a limit. For one thing, it sometimes helps to keep the links from breaking when it goes through email. Another thing, words like “the” and “and” don’t help in search engines, so why put them in?
I try to make a habit of editing the post slug in wordpress and eliminate unnecessary words before I hit publish. Since I’ve started doing that, I’ve seen some really amazing results in Google.
I’m not an SEO expert so I don’t know the right answer, this is just what I’ve learned from experience.
jonson roth | June 25th, 2008 at 12:04 am #
Someone wrote late last year that you’re safe up to around 32 words in a URL (based on being in the title). There’s a relevance factor. Now I don’t know if this is still true, or whether it was fully true in the first place, but know that many popular sites have long titles and subsequently long WP URLs. That is, the URL length doesn’t seem to harm them if the title is “natural”.
John from WeHaveContact | June 25th, 2008 at 10:19 am #
We use the “http://domain/category/post name” structure, but even for our lengthier post names, I omit all but the relevant keywords. Depending on their context, words like “and”, “but” and “or” get taken out if the URL becomes too long.
I haven’t actually done any research to see if doing that is a good thing. Any suggestions?
tkada.com | June 25th, 2008 at 11:46 am #
I used to give big titles the tips is quiet useful, am going to try this!!!
Curt | June 25th, 2008 at 3:02 pm #
I don’t thing Google is giving much weight to the keywords in the URL anymore, but like you said - who knows. I have been using shorter URLs with ids rather then keywords and have not seem any different in Google traffic.
Internet Marketing Joy | June 25th, 2008 at 5:31 pm #
I personally think that shorter URLs has more advantages than longer ones..it’s because shorter URLs are easily remembered and memorized..^^
Sarah | June 26th, 2008 at 5:08 pm #
It’s not something I think about. I don’t aim for long URLs mainly because the post title will wrap onto two lines, but I also don’t think to edit my post slug.
I don’t think it’s a great idea that any search engine should be penalising people for having long URLs in this manner. Afterall, how many novice bloggers are there who write excessively long posts without thinking, and probably wouldn’t even know they could change their post slug, and even if they did, they probably wouldn’t know that they should if it’s too long.
So much for the ‘create and develop your site for your visitors, not for the search engines’ when you then have to concern yourself over the length of your URLs in case the search engines potentially ignore or penalise your pages over them. It’s Google laying down the law yet again.
Yes, long spammy URLs need dealing with, but why penalise the innocent too?
Budhi | June 29th, 2008 at 11:01 pm #
Actually I am not really sure if the permalink structure has a significant weight on google’ SERP, hence I am sticking with Wordpress default permalink http://www.mydomain.com/?p=123.
Joao | July 3rd, 2008 at 3:51 pm #
Thanks for the information
Mark | July 6th, 2008 at 6:19 am #
People say shorter is better, however, some domain names can be worth more if they are longer.