On 23 October 2026, Google updated its URL structure best practices to spell out how to separate words in a web address: use hyphens, not underscores. Google’s own changelog says the update clarifies word-separation guidance. It is a documentation clarification, not a new ranking system, but it is a good reason to check your own URLs.
What Google’s documentation says
The page recommends separating words in URLs with hyphens (-) instead of underscores (_), because hyphens help users and search engines identify individual concepts in the address. Google explains why: underscores are commonly used in programming languages to join words into one name, such as format_date, while a hyphen clearly signals a word boundary.
The same page lists the other options it does not recommend: underscores, or joining words together with no separator at all, like greendress.
- Recommended:
example.com/summer-clothing - Not recommended:
example.com/summer_clothingorexample.com/summerclothing
What this does not mean
Google’s changelog describes the change as a clarification of guidance, and says the reason was to align the documentation with episodes of its “The Non-Canonical Cabinet” video series. Nothing in it says that underscore URLs are penalised or that switching to hyphens will lift your rankings. Treat the hyphen as a readability and clarity best practice.
That matters for how you react. Renaming every URL on a working site is a risky job, and the documentation gives no reason to do it in a hurry. A page that already ranks and uses underscores is not an emergency.
Other URL habits on the same page
While you are reviewing, the same guide covers a few more points worth a quick look:
- Descriptive words over ID numbers. A readable path is better than a long string of numbers or codes.
- Your audience’s language. If your customers search in a certain language, Google suggests using words in that language, or transliterated words, in the URL.
- Case sensitivity. Google treats
/APPLEand/appleas different URLs. If your server treats them the same, convert everything to one case. - Fewer parameters. Trim parameters that do not change the page content, such as session IDs or referral tags.
- No fragments for content. Do not use a
#fragment to change what a page shows.
Should you change existing URLs?
New pages: yes, start with hyphens
For anything you publish from today, use short, lowercase, hyphenated slugs that describe the page. A Lahore dental clinic, for example, would be better served by /teeth-whitening-lahore/ than /service_id_482/. WordPress generates hyphenated slugs by default, so this is mostly about not overriding it.
Old pages: change only with a plan
If you do decide to fix old underscore URLs, treat it as a small site move. Google’s documentation on redirects explains how to send visitors and crawlers from the old address to the new one. At minimum you would:
- List the pages you want to change and decide whether each one is worth the effort.
- Set up a permanent (301) redirect from every old URL to its new one.
- Update internal links, your sitemap and canonical tags so they point to the new addresses.
- Watch Search Console afterwards for crawl errors or pages that drop out of the index.
If a page is performing well, the safer call is often to leave it alone and apply hyphens only going forward.
A short action checklist
- Export your URL list from your sitemap or CMS and search it for underscores.
- Use hyphens for every new page, post and product.
- Pick one case, lowercase, and make sure variants redirect or resolve to a single version.
- Remove parameters that do not change content, and keep session IDs out of URLs.
- Only migrate old URLs when you have redirects and monitoring ready.
URL clean-up is one of the checks in a technical SEO review, and it sits naturally alongside on-page SEO work such as titles and headings. If you would like a second pair of eyes on your site structure, you are welcome to get in touch with our team.
