URLs contain more than 6 path segments, indicating over-nested site architecture that reduces crawl priority and readability.
By Seoxpert Editorial · Published · Updated
Google uses URL depth as one of several signals when prioritising which pages to crawl first and which to consider "important". Pages buried 7 levels deep are crawled less often and treated as less central to the site's topic than pages closer to the root. Depth also correlates with broken internal linking — the deeper a page sits, the fewer internal links typically point to it.
Deep URLs are re-crawled less frequently, meaning new content and fixes take longer to be indexed. The deeper the nesting, the lower the typical internal-link equity flowing to the page.
Scanner parses each URL's pathname, splits on slash, and counts non-empty segments. URLs with more than 6 segments are flagged.
Before and after flattening
BEFORE (8 segments, 82 chars):
/shop/electronics/computers/laptops/gaming/asus/rog-strix-g15/review
AFTER (2 segments, 27 chars):
/reviews/asus-rog-strix-g15
# The category is still shown in breadcrumbs on the page itself.
# The URL is shorter, shallower, and a direct topic match.Not as a direct factor, but it indirectly signals importance. Pages at shallow paths receive more crawl priority and more internal links by default, both of which do affect rankings.
Breadcrumbs belong on the page, marked up with BreadcrumbList schema — not duplicated in the URL path. Google uses breadcrumb schema to render the hierarchy in SERPs regardless of how deep the actual URL is.
Page URLs exceed 120 characters — they truncate in SERP snippets, become hard to share, and often signal messy site architecture.
When important pages are more than four clicks away from the homepage, they become less accessible to both users and search engines. This deep nesting reduces c
Run a scan to see if URLs with Deep Path Hierarchies affects your pages.
Scan my website →