Flat URLs vs. Nested URLs: Which Structure is Best for Your Directory?

I recently came across an interesting discussion online: when building a directory is it better to build URLs around geographic hierarchy or use a flat structure?

The person who posted runs Merchmapper.com - a map-based directory featuring location-specific merchandise like brewery shirts and city prints. With 100 or so locations across the U.S. and plans to expand, they wanted to nail down the right SEO approach before scaling up.

The question was: should they use a flat structure like /product-name or a location-based structure like /california/yosemite/product-name?

A seasoned SEO expert may view this differently, but I don’t think there’s a universal answer. It’s going to depend on your specific directory & the products/services you’re listing.

The Two Approaches

Clean URLs

/product/yosemite-hoodie
/product/pike-place-market-tote

Pros:

• Natural fit for multi-location products
• Lower barrier to entry - can quickly launch without fully mapped location taxonomy
• Reduced thin content risk i.e category pages with only one or two products.
• Simpler migrations (fewer/no urls to update)

Cons:

• Location relevance signals are less explicit

Location-Based URL Hierarchy

/california/yosemite/yosemite-hoodie
/washington/seattle/pike-place-market-tote

Pros:

• Creates natural location landing pages (/california/yosemite/)
• Better for location-based search intent
• Clear site architecture

Cons:

• Difficult if products span multiple locations
• More complex migrations - requires careful upfront planning of your location taxonomy
• Could potentially result in thin content pages

What Actually Works?

The truth is both approaches have their merits. For geo-specific directories where location is the primary search intent, location-based URLs are likely to have a slight advantage (but there’s no definitive research proving this AFAIK). For other directories, it’s best to keep it simple and use flat URLs.

Here’s the reasoning: when someone searches “Yosemite merchandise” or “Seattle Pike Place Market souvenirs,” Google wants to show them a page specifically about merchandise from that location. A dedicated /california/yosemite/ page with multiple products may signal stronger topical relevance than scattered product pages with location tags.

Whatever option you choose, schema markup and proper internal linking likely close much of the performance gap. The key is creating dedicated location landing pages either way - location-based URLs just make that hierarchy explicit in the URL path.

Which does listable use?

Listable currently uses flat URL structures (/product-name), which work well for most directories and keep things simple to manage and scale.

However, after some reflection, we’re planning to add support for nested URL structures too - including category-based (/category/product-name) and location-based options (/location/product-name or /state/city/product-name).

If you’re building a geo-specific directory where nested location URLs would be valuable, please add your vote to the ticket - we’re prioritizing development based on user needs and would love to hear your use case.