Developing
The report is second-hand: no transcript was provided and the only verbatim language is the "incredibly small signal" phrase.
In 60 seconds
- Google posted the first video in a series called "The Non-Canonical Cabinet", with Gary Illyes and Cherry Prommawin discussing URLs.
- Illyes called keywords in a URL or domain an "incredibly small signal" for rankings.
- He said hyphens, not underscores, should separate keywords in the URL path, and that Google can detect spamming in URLs.
- Topic titles also mention long URLs, Punycode and percent-encoding, with no detail in the article.
Impact Layer
- What changed
- A Google engineer restated, on video, how little URL keywords matter.
- Why it matters
- Teams still rewrite URLs for keywords, which can create redirect work for little return.
- Who is affected
- SEOs, developers and site owners planning URL structures or migrations.
- Martech stack area
- SEO & Search, CMS
- Stack impact
- Do not change working URLs only to add keywords. For new URLs, use readable words separated by hyphens.
- Business impact
- Low Second-hand summary by Search Engine Roundtable with no transcript or timestamps; the long-URL question and encoding points appear only as topic titles.
- Related vendors
- What to watch
- Further episodes of the series and Google's official URL documentation.
Barry Schwartz reported on Search Engine Roundtable on October 14, 2026 that Google posted the first video in a series called “The Non-Canonical Cabinet”.
What was said
- Gary Illyes said keywords in a URL or domain are an “incredibly small signal” for rankings.
- He said hyphens, not underscores, should separate keywords in the URL path.
- He said Google can detect spamming in URLs.
- Cherry Prommawin joined the discussion of how Google Search handles URLs.
Topics listed
Whether URLs are a ranking factor, hyphens versus underscores and emojis. Long URLs, Punycode and percent-encoding appear only as topic titles in the article.
Not stated
A transcript or timestamps, how small the signal is, whether the long-URL question is answered, the video’s upload date and whether more episodes are planned. The article notes the topics were covered before.
Our read
Do not run a URL project for ranking. Use clear words and hyphens on new pages, and leave live URLs alone.
Sources
- Search Engine Roundtable: Google Search On URLs, Ranking Factor, Hyphens vs Underscores & Emojis (opens in a new tab)
Source for who said what and what is not covered.