URL length is not a direct ranking factor, so a shorter URL does not rank higher because it is shorter. What is true is that shorter URLs tend to come with cleaner site structure, better click-through, and easier sharing, and those things carry real value. The benefit people attribute to short URLs is genuine but indirect, riding on what usually accompanies a short URL rather than on the character count itself. Trimming a URL to hit some length target gains you nothing on its own.
The confusion is a classic correlation-read-as-cause. Sites with short, tidy URLs are often the same sites with thoughtful architecture, sensible category structure, and clear content, and those qualities do help performance. So short URLs and good rankings show up together often enough that it looks like length is the driver. It is not. Strip away the cleaner structure and the better content, and the bare character count does almost nothing for you.
Where shorter URLs do help is in human-facing behavior. A clean, readable URL is easier to scan in search results, more likely to earn a click, and more likely to be copied, shared, and linked without breaking or looking suspicious. A long, parameter-stuffed URL can look untrustworthy and gets mangled when shared. Those click-through and link effects are real and worth having, but notice they come from readability and trust, not from length as a ranking input.
So the right-sized view is to keep URLs reasonably short because short usually means clean and clear, not because a search engine rewards brevity. A slightly longer URL that is descriptive and readable beats a cryptically short one. Length is a byproduct of doing the structural work well, not a lever you optimize in isolation.
When you create a new page, write a URL that is clear, descriptive, and as short as it can be while still making sense to a human, and stop there. Do not chase a character count or hack words out of a URL to make it shorter, because the ranking benefit you are imagining is not in the length itself.