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What should be the url length, as when we set the length to 50 , few of the words eliminate from question title, I don't want to skip any of the words,

Please suggest what should be the idle question title length.

Does it Impact on google search when words are missing from title?
Q2A version: 1.8

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Hi @madanswer.ask

There's an administrator option called 'Question title length in URLs' for the setting described in your question; it's under `Admin``Viewing`; see animation below.

GIF animation indicating where the administrator option named "Question title length in URLs" sits in

It's 50 characters by default and it's recommended to keep the whole URL (which includes question's title in it) between 50 and 100 characters long, according to these articles:

So what is before question's title needs to be taken into account when adjusting this setting.

Please suggest what should be the idle question title length.

Does it Impact on google search when words are missing from title?

Because of this limit, it is important to ensure question's title is concise, clear and descriptive. Here's when spam control mechanisms, effective  moderation, and user's cooperation come in handy; but there's a couple of administrator options that can help users keep question's title short (see GIF animation):

  • Minimum length of question title (12 characters by default)
  • Maximum length of question title (120 characters by default)

which are under `Admin``Posting`; so adjust these three options in order to strike a good balance and help keep most URLs between 50 and 100 characters long.

few of the words eliminate from question title, I don't want to skip any of the words,

If that's undesired, you can:

  • Choose a greater value for the  `Question title length in URLs` option
  • Override function `qa_q_request()` such that it'll ignore this option

Tidbits

What does 'slug' exactly mean?
Michiel Heijmans's article defines it as this:

A slug is the part of a URL which identifies a particular page on a website in an easy to read form. In other words, it’s the part of the URL that explains the page’s content. 

For instance, the slug for this question is (as of this writing):

91809/what-should-be-the-url-length

which is 35-character long, but if you prepend what is before the slug, then the URL would be 70-character long.

Q&A platforms are supposed to be rich content websites so I think it is okay if it is around 100 characters as long as slugs go to the point.

Question2Answer uses a function called `qa_slugify()` for creating questions' slugs; when slugs are too long, it'll remove the shortest words until what is left meets a given maximum (if any).


I hope this is useful.

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