Google’s John Mueller told a Reddit thread on June 16 that switching US content from /blog/ to /en-us/blog/ will not improve rankings. The clarification matters because URL restructures carry migration risk, and teams often absorb that risk expecting a targeting payoff that does not exist.
Mueller’s exact words: “I don’t think you’d see a practical SEO difference between using /blog/ or /en-us/blog/ for your US content.” He acknowledged one genuine upside of the localized path: easier segmentation in analytics and data tools, where filtering by market becomes a URL-prefix operation rather than a tagging exercise. That is a real operational benefit. It is simply not an SEO benefit.
The distinction is important because folder paths do not function as locale targeting signals on their own. For multinational sites that need Google to understand which content serves which market, the correct tools are hreflang annotations and explicit locale signals in the page markup. A path like /en-us/ is readable and logical, but Mueller’s comment confirms it does not substitute for, or amplify, those mechanisms.
International SEO teams weighing a folder restructure should now split the decision into two separate questions. First: does the team need better analytics segmentation by market? If yes, a market-specific folder path is a reasonable infrastructure choice, and the migration cost may be worth it for reporting clarity alone. Second: is the driver a belief that the restructure will lift rankings or improve Google’s locale targeting? If that is the primary rationale, Mueller’s statement removes the justification.
The migration risk calculus is straightforward. URL restructures require 301 redirects, updated internal links, updated sitemaps, and a monitoring window for crawl and index recovery. On large sites, recovery can take weeks. Taking on that cost for an analytics gain is a defensible business decision. Taking it on for an SEO gain that Mueller says does not exist is not.
One nuance the source thread did not surface: the guidance applies cleanly to a US-only or primary-market scenario. Sites managing genuinely parallel content for distinct locales, say separate English-language versions for the US, UK, and Australia, still need to think carefully about how they signal those distinctions to Google. The folder structure alone will not do it. Hreflang, canonical handling, and consistent locale signals in the HTML remain the operative layer.
For teams already running /en-us/ or similar structures, nothing in Mueller’s statement suggests rolling back. The segmentation benefit is real, and a second restructure introduces fresh migration risk for no gain. Leave it in place, confirm your hreflang implementation is correct, and spend the engineering time there instead.
The practical takeaway for the next 90 days: audit your hreflang annotations before your folder paths.
John Mueller’s comments appeared in a Reddit thread and were reported by Search Engine Journal on June 16, 2026.
