Does the Number of Folders in Your URLs Really Hurt Your SEO?

Official statement

John Mueller indicated on Twitter that the number of folders/directories in a URL had no importance for the search engine. A URL can be labeled as https://www.example.com/dir1/dir2/dir3/dir4/page.html or https://www.example.com/dir1/page.html, it will be taken into account in the same way by Google. Moreover, John Mueller believes that "no search engine cares about it anyway."

Source : Search Engine Roundtable

📅

Official statement from January 31, 2022 (4 years ago)

⚠ A more recent statement exists on this topic Should you really multiply structured data on your pages to please Google? Ryan Levering · August 23, 2022 View statement →

What you need to understand

URL depth, meaning the number of directories or folders contained in a page's address, is often perceived as a ranking factor. Many SEO practitioners believe that a short URL with few levels would be favored over a deep URL.

According to this official statement, Google absolutely does not take into account the number of folders in a URL's structure. Whether your page is accessible via /dir1/page.html or /dir1/dir2/dir3/dir4/page.html, the search engine will treat it exactly the same way.

What really matters is the distance in terms of clicks from the homepage, not the syntactic structure of the URL. A page can have a long URL but be accessible in 2 clicks, or have a short URL but be buried 6 clicks deep.

The number of directories in the URL does not affect crawling or ranking
Click depth from the homepage remains an important criterion
URL structure and site architecture are two distinct concepts
Modern search engines analyze content, not URL syntax

SEO Expert opinion

This statement is completely consistent with what we've been observing in the field for several years. E-commerce sites with deep URLs (category/subcategory/product/variant) are not penalized if their internal linking is solid.

The confusion stems from the fact that URL depth and click depth are often correlated, but not systematically. A site can have a short URL but poor internal linking that makes the page difficult to reach. Conversely, a long URL can be directly linked from the main menu.

Warning: This doesn't mean that URL structure is unimportant. A clear and descriptive URL improves user experience, click-through rate in SERPs, and semantic understanding of the content. But the number of slashes itself is not a ranking factor.

Practical impact and recommendations

Stop obsessing over the number of levels in your URLs during your SEO audits
Focus your efforts on reducing click depth from the homepage (ideally 3 clicks maximum for important pages)
Optimize your internal linking to make strategic pages easily accessible
Use descriptive and readable URLs rather than trying to artificially shorten them
Regularly audit the internal PageRank distribution via crawl tools
Favor a coherent silo architecture even if it creates longer URLs
Don't restructure your site solely to shorten URLs (risk of massive redirections)
Place contextual links from your high-authority pages to important deep pages

In summary: free yourself from the constraint of the number of folders in your URLs and invest instead in an intelligent link architecture that facilitates access to important content.

Optimizing site architecture and internal linking requires an in-depth analysis of PageRank distribution and a tailored strategy. These structural optimizations often require sharp technical expertise and an overall vision. If redesigning your architecture seems complex, support from a specialized SEO agency can help you implement these changes in a secure and high-performing manner.