In June 2025, Google quietly rolled out updates to its official documentation on URL structure best practices, bringing along more precise guidance, real-world examples, and reinforced SEO recommendations.
In June 2025, Google quietly rolled out updates to its official documentation on URL structure best practices, bringing along more precise guidance, real-world examples, and reinforced SEO recommendations. These changes are part of Google’s ongoing effort to align its public-facing documentation with the evolving behavior of crawlers, users, and, most notably, AI search models.
In this blog, we’ll examine:
Let’s dive into what this update means for your website and how you should adapt.
A URL is more than just a web address—it’s a ranking signal, a user experience element, and a critical component of how search engines discover and understand your content. In an era where AI is generating snippets, summarizing pages, and surfacing content directly in results, clean and consistent URLs are foundational.
Here’s why URL structure remains essential in 2025:
Google’s documentation aims to standardize best practices and reduce common mistakes that can hamper crawling and indexing.
The updated guidelines fall under Google’s Search Central documentation, and the new version provides:
Let’s break down the key areas of focus.
Old Advice: Keep URLs short and meaningful
Updated in 2025: Google now provides examples of how overly generic slugs, such as/item?id=1234 or /page2, can lead to ambiguous indexing.
New Example:
❌ Avoid: https://example.com/item?id=9876
✅ Recommended: https://example.com/mens-running-shoes-nike
Takeaway:
Google emphasizes that URLs should clearly describe the content, helping both crawlers and users understand what the page is about before they click.
Old Advice: Dynamic URLs are okay if handled well
Updated in 2025: While dynamic URLs are still allowed, Google now highlights how excessive parameters (especially in faceted navigation) can confuse crawlers or lead to duplicate content.
New Example:
❌ Avoid: https://example.com/search?category=12&color=red&sort=low-to-high
✅ Recommended: https://example.com/red-shoes/sale
Takeaway:
Minimize unnecessary query strings and convert filters into readable, static paths when feasible.
Old Advice: Keep URLs stable
Updated in 2025: The documentation now illustrates how inconsistent URL formats can lead to indexing inefficiencies.
New Example:
❌ Inconsistent:
✅ Consistent:
Takeaway:
Choose one format for casing, structure, and slugs—and stick with it. Avoid mix-and-match patterns.
Old Advice: Prefer hyphens over underscores
Updated in 2025: Google clarifies that underscores are not treated as word separators, which can affect keyword detection and relevance.
New Example:
❌ Avoid: https://example.com/red_running_shoes
✅ Recommended: https://example.com/red-running-shoes
Takeaway:
Use hyphens (-) to separate words. Avoid underscores (_) as they hinder readability and keyword parsing.
Google’s update reminds site owners that keyword stuffing in URLs is still a bad practice.
New Example:
❌ Avoid:
✅ Recommended:
Takeaway:
Use relevant keywords in your URL to describe the content, but keep it natural and short.
This isn’t new advice, but the updated document reiterates:
Takeaway:
Security is a key component of user trust and a significant ranking factor. Consistent redirection ensures better indexing and avoids duplicate content issues.
For years, Google’s URL best practices have remained relatively static, but SEO has changed. With AI powering large parts of search and semantic understanding at its core, URL semantics now directly influence how:
By showing clear “before and after” examples, Google is encouraging site owners to make smarter URL design choices upfront, especially as AI continues to evolve.
To align with Google’s updated guidance, here’s what you should prioritize moving forward:
Google’s documentation update is more than just cosmetic. It reflects a growing trend in SEO, where structure, semantics, and machine readability are becoming just as important as content quality.
AI systems parsing your site don’t rely on just what’s on the page—they also consider the structure of your URLs, how consistent your taxonomy is, and whether your pages follow expected patterns.
In short, structured and intentional URLs help:
Google’s 2025 refresh of its URL structure best practices is both a reminder and a roadmap. As the search continues to evolve—powered by generative AI, voice assistants, and predictive engines—small technical details, such as URL structure, can significantly impact visibility and rankings.
By applying these best practices, you’re not only helping search engines understand your site better—you’re also setting up a stronger foundation for performance across every type of search experience, from mobile to voice to AI.
The takeaway? Clean, clear, and consistent URLs aren’t just good for SEO—they’re essential.
