Google: Shorter Domains Are Not Better For Ranking Or SEO

Feb 12, 2021 - 7:31 am 1 by

Google Short Urls

Google's John Mueller said that having a shorter domain name or a shorter URL is not going to benefit you in terms of your SEO and ranking in Google Search. He said on Twitter "domain name or URL length is not a factor, adding that "shorter is not better for SEO."

He also said "I can see how people might like short & sweet domain names, but there's definitely no SEO bonus attached to them like that."

There is one other point he made that Google uses "length lightly for canonicalization, but that's choosing between 2 versions of the same thing (eg, /home/ vs /home/index.html)." We covered this in 2016 when Google said they prefer to canonicalize to the shorter URL.

Google has said in the past that URL length is not a ranking factor but said to try to keep it under 2,000 characters at one point in time.

Here are the tweets referenced here:

Forum discussion at Twitter.

 

Popular Categories

The Pulse of the search community

Search Video Recaps

 
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Google Updates

Google Search Ranking Volatility Heats Up January 29 & 30th

Jan 30, 2025 - 7:51 am
Google Maps

Google Maps Service Area Business Access Request Link

Jan 30, 2025 - 7:41 am
Google Ads

Google: Why 100 Negative Keywords For Google Ads PMax Campaigns

Jan 30, 2025 - 7:31 am
Google Maps

Google Business Profiles Gains Batch Price Editing & Moving Menu Items

Jan 30, 2025 - 7:21 am
Google

Google AI Overviews Go Deeper With Gemini 2.0?

Jan 30, 2025 - 7:11 am
Bing Search

Microsoft Bing Advertising Revenue Up 21%

Jan 30, 2025 - 7:05 am
Previous Story: Google SEO Advice On Temporarily Removing Site Functionality In Support Of Action