I have head that URL length is a factor in search results weighting – longer URLs are weighted lower.
Is there a setting to change that so that pages in my site are NOT penalized for longer URLs?
Hi Jim,
URL length is indeed one of the many factors in the ranking algorithm.
It is #3 in the query processor “cooler” options, please see the documentation link below. You may be interested in the other links from that page as well.
If you set that factor to zero then it won’t apply in the ranking algorithm. Be careful when manually setting query processor options, as it is very easy to go overboard and really mess up the results. I recommend to try the changes in the “preview” mode first and thoroughly test it with your various stakeholders before making the change live.
Belated thanks for this response. I will give this a shot (gently). 
Generally speaking you shouldn’t manually adjust ranking parameters unless there is a really clear case that applies as this may have a negative effect overall on your site - tuning is a better way of fixing ranking issues because it runs an optimisation process using training data that you provide to it.
If all of your URLs are long on the site, or the site is very flat then reducing the URL length factor to 0 won’t have any real effect because every page ranks about the same on that factor (if that makes sense).