mrowton - 4:35 pm on Jul 30, 2005 (gmt 0)

I don't remember where I read this but I recall some search engines say the less levels the better, meaning they might not go past 4 or 5 levels deep.

I would assume this is referring to the number of hops from the homepage that a spider would have to navigate. However you wouldn't necesarily have to click on category 1 to get to category 2, then category 3, all serial. Most categories would have a subcategories listed, which would cut out a number of hops. Other navigation such as a sitemap also give more direct access to spiders.

As far as the actual number of folders in the URL, I can't imagine this being a problem. Some of the larger news sites have URL's containing half a dozen or more slashes.