Google Says Shorter Domains Are Not Better For Ranking Or SEO

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:

Domain name or URL length is not a factor. Shorter is not better for SEO. Maybe better or easier for marketing, which is separate.

We do use length lightly for canonicalization, but that’s choosing between 2 versions of the same thing (eg, /home/ vs /home/index.html).

— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) February 9, 2021

I totally disagree from an SEO point of view. I can see how people might like short & sweet domain names, but there’s definitely no SEO bonus attached to them like that.

— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) February 9, 2021

Forum discussion at Twitter.