Google finally answered one of SEO’s oldest questions. In the first episode of its new series The Non-Canonical Cabinet, published October 14, 2026, Search Developer Advocates Gary Illyes and Cherry Prommawin said keywords in a domain or URL become “basically irrelevant” the moment a page has content.
An incredibly small signal
Illyes was direct. A URL stuffed with phrases like “best grilled chicken in London cheap delicious” will not rank first, “not even a little.” He called URL keywords “an incredibly small signal” that only matters when Google has absolutely nothing else to evaluate, such as a site that is two seconds old with zero content. Once real content appears, the keyword signal fades.
That is more specific than Google’s written guidance from May 2026, which said keywords in domains and URL paths have “hardly any effect” beyond breadcrumbs. The video adds a clear condition: no content, tiny signal; real content, basically none.
Domains vs paths: different rules
The 12-minute 56-second video covers the practical rules for naming pages. Domain names follow internet standards RFC 1035 and RFC 1123, which allow letters A–Z, numbers and hyphens, but not underscores or emoji. Internationalized domain names are possible, but they are translated into Punycode with the xn-- prefix behind the scenes.
URL paths are looser. Emoji and non-English characters can technically appear after the domain, and Googlebot will crawl them. Browsers translate those characters into percent encoding. But the hosts warned that some browsers and social apps will show a string of gibberish, which can hurt clicks and trust.
Google’s written URL structure documentation is stricter than the video here. It asks site owners to percent-encode non-ASCII characters in link href attributes, and warns that failing to meet the standard can lead to inefficient crawling.
Hyphens over underscores, always
For word separators in paths, the advice is simple. Google treats words joined by underscores as one long word, while hyphens work as a universal separator. The hosts put it plainly: use chicken-gear, not chicken_gear.
The practical checklist is short:
- Use short, readable URLs with descriptive words.
- Separate words with hyphens, never underscores.
- Keep emoji out of domains; use them in paths only with care.
- For non-Latin scripts, use IDNs or native words in paths and encode links properly.
Why this matters
URL decisions are cheap at launch and expensive to change later. If keyword-rich domains no longer do much, the operative reasons to choose a URL are readability, trust and shareability. A clean address helps users know where they are before they click.
The hosts summed up the mindset: “Just because the technology allows you to be weird doesn’t mean you should be weird.” That is the rule to bring into your next site architecture discussion.
Source: PPC Land
