Google Updated Its URL Rules: What Owners Check

Google updated its URL structure guidance in late October, and the message for business owners is simple: separate words in your web addresses with hyphens, never underscores, because Google reads underscored words as one long word. Search Engine Roundtable reported the edit on October 21, and Google’s own documentation log lists a URL guidance update on October 23. Nothing here is a penalty or an algorithm update, but it is a clear signal about how Google wants your website addresses built.

We are FOG Digital Marketing in San Antonio, and we audit website addresses every week for local businesses. Good URL structure is cheap to get right on a new page and risky to change on an old one, so the real question is what to fix and what to leave alone. This post covers what Google said, what it did not say, and a six step check you can finish this week.

Key Takeaways

• Google edited the hyphens section of its URL structure documentation in late October, and the advice still reads: use hyphens, not underscores, to separate words.
• Google’s Gary Illyes called keywords in a URL “an incredibly small signal” in the first episode of the Non-Canonical Cabinet series, published October 14.
• Illyes also said words joined by underscores in a URL path are treated as “one long word”, so /roof_repair_cost reads as a single term.
• Google’s guidance says URL paths are case sensitive, so /Roofing and /roofing are two different addresses unless your server treats them the same.
• Changing a ranking URL without a 301 redirect is the costly mistake, so fix new pages first and move old ones only when the traffic risk is low.
• A clean set of web addresses takes about an hour to audit and costs nothing but time.

What Did Google Change in Its URL Structure Guidance?

Google reworded one section of its URL structure best practices page. According to Search Engine Roundtable, the section titled “Use hyphens to separate words” kept its core recommendation but changed its explanation. The old text said underscores were commonly used to keep ideas together. The new text says underscores “are commonly used for denoting concepts that should be kept together” and adds that hyphens “clearly signal a word boundary.”

Google’s documentation updates log lists the change on October 23 and says it syncs the page with episodes of a video series called The Non-Canonical Cabinet. In plain terms, Google was cleaning up its written advice to match what its engineers now say on camera. No one at Google announced a deadline, a ranking change or a reason to panic about your current pages.

Why should a business owner care about a wording edit? Because URL structure is one of the few technical choices you control completely, and it shows up everywhere: in search results, in shared links, in your analytics reports and in the way AI assistants quote your pages. Tidy web addresses make every one of those easier to read and easier to trust.

Do Keywords in a URL Still Help Me Rank?

Barely. In the first episode of the series, “What can you actually put in a URL?”, published October 14, Illyes called keywords in a URL “an incredibly small signal.” He said they matter mostly when Google has almost nothing else to go on, such as a brand new site with no content. Once Google can read your page, the words in the web address become “basically irrelevant” as a ranking factor, according to a summary of the episode.

This is useful news for a busy owner. You do not need to cram “best roofer san antonio tx” into every slug, and you should not rebuild your site to chase a keyword in the address. Your page copy, headings, internal links and reviews carry far more weight than the slug does. Short, readable addresses still help people, because a visitor who sees /kitchen-remodeling knows what they will find before they click.

Illyes also said Google will crawl emoji in a URL path, which is allowed even though emoji are not allowed in domain names. Browsers and apps may show the encoded version as a string of gibberish, which is a good reason to skip them. For a San Antonio plumber or law firm, plain lowercase words are the safest choice.

Which URL Structure Rules Should My Website Follow?

Google’s page lists several rules beyond hyphens. We pulled the ones that matter most for small business websites into the table below, along with the move we recommend for each.

Notice what is not in the table: dates, the word “blog” in every slug, or a magic character limit. Google gives no numeric cap, though our rule of thumb at FOG is to keep slugs under about 60 characters so they stay readable in search results and shared links. A consistent URL structure matters more than a perfect one, because consistency prevents duplicate pages and makes redirects simple.