The three-clicks-to-everything rule

Google's spokespeople say crawl depth doesn't matter directly. They're technically right and practically wrong. Pages four or more clicks from the homepage get crawled less, get less link equity, and rank lower — not because depth is a 'factor' but because everything depth correlates with is.

Our hard rule: every URL is reachable from the homepage in three clicks or fewer. Smoke test enforces it. New page that breaks the rule fails CI.

The rule isn't optional. It's the only architectural decision that survives every algorithmic update.