"Pages closer to the root rank better — keep URLs shallow."

"Pages closer to the root rank better — keep URLs shallow."

No. Google ranks by click depth, not slash count.

Here's the distinction people miss: /a/b/c/d/product looks "deep" in the URL string, but if it's linked from your homepage, it's one click from the root. Conversely, /product can be a logical orphan, buried twelve clicks deep in navigation. Mueller has said the number of slashes in a URL is not a ranking factor; what matters is how many clicks from the homepage the page actually is.

Here's what actually happens: the folder structure in the URL is a human-readability and organization choice. The ranking-relevant "depth" is your internal link graph — how easily a crawler (and a user) reaches the page from authoritative hubs.

So flattening every URL to /product to look shallow, while leaving the page unlinked, optimizes the cosmetic depth and ignores the real one.

Count clicks, not slashes. (The URL bar is not your site architecture. Your links are.)