Which url is better?

/england/essex/chelmsford/baddow.html

or

/england-essex-chelmsford-baddows.html

????

Reason I'm asking is that i've been told searchengines punish urls buried deep within a directory tree.. is that true?

Neither makes a difference, however I will say this:

Only use the directory tree style if you have several files in each directory. For example if chelmsford has more than one page (baddow.html + others) then it's more adviseable to use that.

Otherwise, there's no need.

I agree, don't use directories without multiple files in each. Also don't string a bunch of keywords on a file name. It looks spammy. Google knows that spam sites use tons of hyphens and long URLs to cram keywords in.

Thanks for the advice guys.

Originally Posted by JDDunn9

I agree, don't use directories without multiple files in each. Also don't string a bunch of keywords on a file name. It looks spammy. Google knows that spam sites use tons of hyphens and long URLs to cram keywords in.

Never knew google would auto detect this..