The internet shouldn’t need another post on the best URL length for SEO. This isn’t new information. But good SEO advice gets buried under outdated checklists, plugin defaults, and increasingly, inaccurate AI Overviews. And after seeing a newly released SEO tool in the Squarespace ecosystem recommend “shorter URLs for SEO,” here we are.

Myth: Short URLs are needed for SEO.
Fact: URL length does not affect search rankings.

What Google Actually Says

In this video from Google’s Search Central series, Search Advocate John Mueller gives a clear response:

“The direct answer is no. The URL length doesn’t matter. We use URLs as identifiers; it doesn’t matter how long they are.”

He also adds:

“So, to sum up, when it comes to search rankings, neither the URL length nor the number of slashes matter. Use a URL structure that works for you and which you can keep for the long run.”

Why Do Tools Flag Long URLs?

Many widely used SEO tools—including ones like Yoast, Rank Math, SEOptimer, and Woorank—flag long URLs, slugs, or permalinks as problematic. These warnings usually appear under “indexing,” “readability,” or “crawlability,” implying a ranking effect that doesn’t exist.

The thresholds are arbitrary:

Over 75 or 100 characters? “Too long.”
Too many slashes? “Too deep.”
No exact keyword match? “Missed opportunity.”

These rules are designed to sell checklist-style guidance—not grounded in how search engines actually work.

Tools need to show progress, so they assign scores to things that are easy to measure, even if those things don’t matter. “URL length” is one of those, whether they’re counting characters or words.

Is There a Technical URL Limit?

Yes, there are technical limits, but most businesses will never come close to hitting them under normal conditions:

Internet Explorer maxes out at 2,083 characters.
Chrome, Firefox, and Safari can handle tens of thousands.

In the video above, Google’s John Mueller casually recommends staying under 1,000 characters, but only for monitoring ease, not for SEO.

If your URL is breaking something, it’s probably not SEO-related—it’s a legacy system or redirect issue.

So, How Long Should Your URLs Be?

Generally accepted URL best practices call for them to be clean, clear, and concise. Short enough to be readable. Long enough to describe the content. Stable enough to be shared and linked. That’s it.

If your CMS produces long URLs with nested folders or parameters, that’s not an SEO crisis. It might be worth cleaning up for consistency, but it won’t tank your rankings.

The One Exception: Canonicalization

There’s one corner case where URL length plays a role: canonicalization. If Google finds multiple versions of a page, it picks one version to index. In that process, Google may prefer a “shorter and clearer” URL, assuming everything else is equal.

That’s not a ranking boost. It’s just a display preference.

We Used a Long URL for This Post on Purpose

Yes, the URL for this article is intentionally—ridiculously—long. Certainly longer than SEO tools would recommend. If this post ranks, it won’t be because of the URL length. If it doesn’t rank, it won’t be because of the URL length.

That’s the point.

We’re not suggesting you follow our lead and start using 100+ character URLs. Under normal circumstances, this post would live at something like /blog/url-length. But sometimes it takes proof-by-example to reset expectations.

You don’t need to shorten a URL just because your CMS or a plugin says it’s too long. You also don’t need to change one for keyword inclusion. But if you do change a URL, make sure you know how to handle 301 redirects—because that can affect SEO.