Opportunity Technical SEO
URL over 115 characters
- Severity
- Opportunity
- Impact
- Low
- Effort to fix
- Medium
- Issue code
url_long
Why it matters
Very long URLs are harder to read, share and remember, and are often truncated in search results.
How to fix it
Shorten the URL to the words that describe the page.
What this means
The full URL, including https:// and the domain, is longer than 115 characters. The evidence shows its exact length.
Why it matters
There is no hard length limit for search engines, and long URLs rank. The problems are practical:
- Search results cut long URLs off, so the breadcrumb shown under the title loses the part that describes the page.
- Long URLs are hard to share, read and paste, and are more often broken in emails and chat apps.
- Length is often a symptom: of deep folder nesting, stacked parameters, or slugs generated from the full page title.
Common causes
- Slugs copied from a long title, with every word kept:
/blog/the-complete-step-by-step-guide-to-.... - Folder paths that mirror the full category tree:
/shop/men/footwear/running/trail/waterproof/.... - Filter and tracking parameters appended to the path. See URL contains parameters.
- Dates and IDs added by the CMS, such as
/2026/10/16/post-name-12345/.
How to fix it
- For new pages, write a short slug by hand: the main topic in three to five words, without stop words such as "the", "and" or "a".
- Flatten deep category paths where the extra folders add nothing.
- Change existing URLs only when the gain is worth it. Each change needs a 301 redirect and updated internal links, canonical tags and sitemap entries.
Verify the fix
The URL Structure view in Pages lists long URLs with their length. Recrawl after any change and check Links to redirecting internal URLs for links still pointing at the old addresses.
How it affects your score
Finding this issue on any page costs the Technical SEO score 0.5 points, plus up to 4 more depending on the share of crawled pages affected. A smaller improvement with a modest effect on its own.
Find the affected URLs
Open Crawl > Issues and pick URL over 115 characters. Each affected URL is listed with its evidence, and Copy URLs or Export URLs hands the list to a developer. The issue also appears in the Action Plan, ranked by impact (low) and effort (medium), and in the issues CSV under the code url_long. After fixing, run a new audit and use Compare to confirm the URLs moved to fixed.