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URLs & domains

URL structure

Also known as: URL structure

URL structure is the way a website builds its addresses: protocol, host, path, and optional parameters. In SEO, it covers how URLs are patterned across a whole site.

What does Google recommend for URL structure?

Google’s documentation advises descriptive words over long ID numbers, for example /wiki/Aviation rather than /index.php?topic=42. It recommends using words in the audience’s language, percent-encoding where needed, and hyphens to separate words, since underscores traditionally group concepts in programming.

Parameters that do not change page content should be avoided. Google names additive filters, irrelevant parameters, session IDs and endless calendar links as patterns that create many URLs for the same content and can overload crawlers. Google also advises treating URLs as case-sensitive and keeping capitalization consistent.

For sites with several countries, Google lists country-specific domains or subdirectories such as example.de or example.com/de/.

Example

Text
https://www.example.com/shoes/running/trail-shoes/

protocol https, host www.example.com, path /shoes/running/trail-shoes/.

Anatomy of a URLThe example URL https://shop.example.de/shoes/sneakers/?color=red&page=2#reviews broken into parts: scheme https, host shop.example.de with subdomain shop, domain example.de and top-level domain de, path /shoes/sneakers/ with a trailing slash, query string with two parameters color=red and page=2, fragment reviews. The fragment is not sent to the server.Trailing slashhttps://shop.example.de/shoes/sneakers/?color=red&page=2#reviewsSchemeHostPathQuery stringFragmentSubdomainDomainParameterParameterTLDcountry code: ccTLDstays in the browser, is notsent to the serverSchematic. Scheme, host, path, query and fragment are components defined in RFC 3986.Subdomain, domain and TLD split the host by DNS level. Without a port, https uses port 443.
A URL broken into its parts. RFC 3986 defines scheme, host, path, query and fragment. Only the browser evaluates the fragment after #, it is not sent to the server. Sources: RFC 3986: Uniform Resource Identifier (URI), Generic Syntax; MDN: What is a URL?; MDN Glossary: TLD.

Common mistakes

Filter and session parameters generate a different URL for every combination, which multiplies crawlable pages.

Sources

  1. URL structure best practices for Google Search – Google Search Centraldevelopers.google.com
  2. What is a URL? – MDNdeveloper.mozilla.org
  3. What are the parts of a URL? – web.devweb.dev

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