Directories in URLs

[fahad direct]

Is there any difference to Google if i am using few directories in my URLs like:

http://example.com/21200168-X0-0-X/J-K/my-item-name

or do i need to revise my links to simply:

http://example.com/my-item-name

Though more than 50% of the urls have been already indexed but i am not getting good results, Advices are highly apprecieated.

[goodroi]

the google ranking algorithm has many, many pieces. not all pieces are worth the same. imho the url structure is not one of the more important pieces.

significant & unique content is important. having high quality inbound links from many relevant external websites is also important. i would focus much more of my time on these issues.

as for your original question, it is generally best to have fewer subdirectories, avoid special characters, include the keyword in the url and in general make the url look pretty to users.

[fahad direct]

Does it make any difference to Google if URLs are in upper case like:

http://example.com/My-Item-Name

[serenoo]

Google wants lower case. Do not type anything in upper case inside the urls.

[aakk9999]

Google wants lower case. Do not type anything in upper case inside the urls.

Just to put the things straight - Google does not care about upper or lower case in URL. Lower case is better because it will save you some mess in the future - visitors are used to lower case URLs and might want to link to URL with URL written in lower cases, when you will get either 404 (Apache) or duplicate content (IIS which is case insensitive).

So whilst lower case is recommended, it is not because of Google wanting it or giving it any preference over mixed case URLs.

[fahad direct]

What if URL has both lower and upper case characters like: My-Item-Name with canonical tag though server is case insensitive? Will it make any difference to Google?

[TheMadScientist]

Google does not care about upper or lower case in URL.

True.

Lower case is better because it will save you some mess in the future - visitors are used to lower case URLs and might want to link to URL with URL written in lower cases, when you will get either 404 (Apache) or duplicate content (IIS which is case insensitive).

Basically true, unless you know mod_rewrite (ISAPI_Rewrite on Windows) and your URLs 'error correct' to the case you are using, then you can have the best of a number of things...

Extensionless URLs, capitalization for readability, lowercase can be used for type-ins and linking.

I do recommend knowing what your are doing with mod_rewrite if you go down CapitalizationAndExtensionlessLane but it can be done effectively if you take the time to learn how to do it... Mine correct basic transposition errors and -'s or misplaced /'s to _'s too.

ADDED

Either way, with or without capitalization, IMO 'shorter is better' from a visitor, usability, linking, look and feel of the site perspective.

[aakk9999]

@TheMadScientist

Agree absolutely - we use custom URL Rewrite that addresses number of URL problems you mentioned.

But unless you are coding your own site - my (unfortunate?) experience so far is that external developers more often get it wrong than right regardless on in how much details you specify what you want and how much "test cases" you write for them to try.

In which case - keeping it as simple as possible to minimise future errors can save a person lots of grief!

@fahad direct
In general it is not a good idea to link internally to URL that is not a canonical version. Whilst in some cases with certain URLs this is hard to avoid, linking across the site to mixed case URLs where each page has canonical set to lower case is not the way I would go.