Limit of Characters in a URL
May 15th, 2008 | by Ankit |Mostly all the CMS have capability of generating clean URL’s now a days !! Unless you are dealing with newspapers, magazines or Blogs where existing legacy systems it’s almost a non issue.
I came across these horrible URL few hours back:
http://www.example.com/Someserviceprovider-12568440-168451224-197-CATALOGS/Interior-Decorators-Decorative-Items/JUCOFABS.html
and
http://www.example.com/Service_Providers/Someserviceproviders/Designing_Processing_Custom_Made/Interior_Decorators_Decorative_Items
These URL’s are not only bad for Search Engines but are also bad for Social Media and Link Directories as they have character limit of something around 255 Characters in all !!
Using a Capital letter in URL is again a very foolish thing to use as they are case-sensitive.
So if you are still on a CMS with old multi parameter URL’s, you should look to get off them sooner rather than later.
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By Navin on May 15, 2008
Dude,
No offense but “capital letters in URL” are okay. Those are not case-sensitive.
Or, if you can provide me some authority links to believe your statement.
By Ankit on May 16, 2008
check out:
http://ankitrawat.com/BLOG
and
http://ankitrawat.com/blog
or
http://ankitrawat.com/Blog
i think you got the answer !!
By Navin on May 17, 2008
Dude,
Your example is misplaced. Your example has to do with canonical issues on your website, and thus technically it can provide two different material to the server.
However, your previous statement had to do with “using capital letters in URL is bad SEO” (please correct me if I’m wrong).
Let’s pick an URL from your blog and capitalize it. Let’s pick this one:
http://ankitrawat.com/blog/limit-of-characters-in-a-url/ (original)
http://ankitrawat.com/blog/Limit-Of-Characters-In-A-Url/ (only first letter in caps)
http://ankitrawat.com/blog/LIMIT-OF-CHARACTERS-IN-A-URL/ (all in caps)
As you can see, all three of them open the same page. If your first URL is indexed by Google, and someone searches for “LIMIT OF CHARACTERS IN A URL” (all in caps), they will still find your blog.
Still don’t believe me? See for yourself:
http://www.google.com/search?q=LIMIT+OF+CHARACTERS+IN+A+URL&sourceid=navclient-ff&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1B3GGGL_enSR242SR242
Also this might be interesting for you:
Google searches are NOT case sensitive. All letters, regardless of how you type them, will be understood as lower case. For example, searches for george washington, George Washington, and gEoRgE wAsHiNgToN will all return the same results.
For more information regarding that matter, please refer to this page:
http://www.google.com/support/bin/static.py?page=searchguides.html&ctx=basics&hl=en
By Ankit on May 18, 2008
http://ankitrawat.com/blog/limit-of-characters-in-a-url/ (original)
http://ankitrawat.com/blog/Limit-Of-Characters-In-A-Url/ (only first letter in caps)
http://ankitrawat.com/blog/LIMIT-OF-CHARACTERS-IN-A-URL/ (all in caps)
Well this is other case as My URL are Modwritten and as a result they are still working if you use Capital letters into them.
Take this example:
http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/adsense-calculator/
http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/Adsense-Calculator/
http://www.seochat.com/Seo-Tools/adsense-calculator/
I had written:
Using a Capital letter in URL is again a very foolish thing to use as they are case-sensitive.
I never said they are bad for SEO.
If they are 2 long they are bad for seo.
I agree that Google searches are NOT case sensitive and i had already explained about this on Digital Point.
My point is URL’s with Caps are hard to remember.
I hope you got what exactly i want to say !!
By Navin on May 19, 2008
In that case, I understand and agree with you
By Dale Hay on May 30, 2008
Mine isn’t case sensitive.
http://www.GoOgLe.com works just like http://www.google.com
:/
By Ankit on May 31, 2008