URLs Significantly Longer Than the Site Average

Why it matters

While search engines like Google can process long URLs, users may have trouble sharing or remembering them. Long URLs are often truncated in emails, social media, or messaging apps, which can break links or reduce trust. Outlier URLs may also signal deeper site structure or parameterization issues.

Impact

Leaving long outlier URLs unresolved can lead to poor user experience and sharing difficulties.

How it's detected

An automated crawler compares each URL's length to the site's 90th percentile (P90) length and flags those exceeding 1.5× P90 or 200 characters.

Common causes

• Excessive path nesting or deeply nested directories
• Unnecessarily long or unstripped query strings
• Session IDs or tracking parameters in URLs
• CMS configurations that generate verbose URLs
• Failure to canonicalize parameterized URLs

How to fix it

Code examples

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^(.*&)?sessionid=[^&]+(&.*)?$
RewriteRule ^product/(.*)$ /product/$1? [R=301,L]

const url = new URL(window.location.href);
url.searchParams.delete('utm_source');
url.searchParams.delete('sessionid');
window.history.replaceState({}, '', url);

FAQ