# URL structure

Category: [Technical SEO](https://seo-geo-glossary.com/en/glossary/category/technical-seo/) › [URLs & domains](https://seo-geo-glossary.com/en/glossary/category/technical-seo/urls-domains/) · 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
```txt
https://www.example.com/shoes/running/trail-shoes/
```
protocol `https`, host `www.example.com`, path `/shoes/running/trail-shoes/`.

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

*Diagram: Anatomy of a URL.* 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.

## Related terms

- [URL](https://seo-geo-glossary.com/en/glossary/url/index.md)
- [SEO-friendly URL](https://seo-geo-glossary.com/en/glossary/seo-friendly-url/index.md)
- [URL parameters](https://seo-geo-glossary.com/en/glossary/url-parameters/index.md)
- [URL case sensitivity](https://seo-geo-glossary.com/en/glossary/url-case-sensitivity/index.md)

## Sources

- [URL structure best practices for Google Search – Google Search Central](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/url-structure)
- [What is a URL? – MDN](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn_web_development/Howto/Web_mechanics/What_is_a_URL)
- [What are the parts of a URL? – web.dev](https://web.dev/articles/url-parts)

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Last updated: October 8, 2026
URL: https://seo-geo-glossary.com/en/glossary/url-structure/