Google covered how URLs are handled in search in the first video of its new series, “The Non-Canonical Cabinet.” Gary Illyes and Cherry Prommawin appeared in the video. They said that keywords in URLs and domains have a “very small” effect on rankings and recommended using hyphens to separate words. They also discussed emoji in URLs and percent encoding.
What became of the idea of stuffing keywords into URLs?
Line up all the search terms you want to target in a single URL, like “best-grilled-chicken-cheap-delicious.” Anyone who has dabbled in SEO has probably seen this at least once. This very idea was one of the topics of the video.
Illyes said that keywords in URLs and domains are “very small” ranking signals and are unlikely to have much effect. He added that Google can detect spammy uses of keywords in URLs. In other words, adding more words does not give you an advantage.
This view is not actually new. Search Engine Roundtable has repeatedly covered past comments from Google that keywords in URLs have little impact, that some SEO professionals focus too much on URL structure, and that URLs should not be changed for ranking purposes. This video revisits the topic from a technical perspective, explaining how URLs are processed.
Not a ranking badge, but a signpost showing where a page is
That doesn’t mean you can ignore URLs altogether. In my view, a URL is less like a badge that boosts rankings and more like a signpost that tells people and machines where a page is.
When a URL appears in search results or a social media share box, people can get a sense of what the page is about. Colleagues can also tell which article it is. Readability and ease of management have value apart from rankings. In practice, it is likely more useful to maintain a concise, meaningful structure consistently than to spend time deciding how many keywords to include.
The advice not to frequently change published URLs solely for ranking purposes has been made in the same context. Google has issued several past statements urging people not to change URLs just for SEO.
Hyphens for word separators, clarified in the video
Another key topic in the video was when to use hyphens versus underscores. Illyes said to use hyphens to separate keywords in URL paths and to avoid underscores. The article introducing the video described this issue as “settled.”
This topic has a long history. Matt Cutts once recommended using dashes, while John Mueller said he did not care about the difference between separators. The advice may have seemed inconsistent over time, but the video clearly recommends hyphens. If you are designing new URLs, standardizing on hyphens will leave less room for doubt.
Behind emoji URLs and internationalized domains
The video also touched on a few more playful topics, including the characters allowed in domain names, internationalized domains and Punycode, and why strings beginning with “xn--” are not typos. Asked whether an emoji-based “.com” domain could exist, the presenters answered no.
If you put emoji in a URL path, they are converted into a different string through a process called percent encoding. They may look cute, but when shared, they can turn into a string of symbols that is difficult to read. The article’s introduction jokingly noted that this could ruin a second date.
For people running multilingual sites or using Japanese URLs, this is not an abstract concern. It is worth prioritizing usability that holds up when a URL is pasted elsewhere over visual flair—and reviewing your company’s URLs with that in mind.
Three things to keep in mind when designing URLs
Applied to day-to-day work, the video’s advice boils down to three points. First, stuffing keywords into URLs is not worth it as a ranking tactic. Second, use hyphens to separate words. Third, decide whether to use special characters such as emoji only after considering how they will look once converted.
URLs may be an unglamorous detail, but once published, they are not easy to change. Rather than expecting ranking magic, decide up front on a structure that is readable and easy to manage. That is the practical guidance to take away from this video.
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