Google has made a minor change to its URL structure best practices for Google Search help document. Specifically, the "Use hyphens to separate words" section. The overall meaning of the section really did not change but Google did update it, so I wanted to point out the update.
The section now reads:
We recommend separating words in your URLs, when possible. Specifically, we recommend using hyphens (-) instead of underscores (_) to separate words in your URLs, as it helps users and search engines better identify concepts in the URL. For historical reasons, we don't recommend using underscores, as underscores are commonly used for denoting concepts that should be kept together, for example, by various programming languages to name functions (such as format_date), whereas hyphens clearly signal a word boundary.
Previously, it read:
We recommend separating words in your URLs, when possible. Specifically, we recommend using hyphens (-) instead of underscores (_) to separate words in your URLs, as it helps users and search engines better identify concepts in the URL. For historical reasons, we don't recommend using underscores, as this style is already commonly used for denoting concepts that should be kept together, for example, by various programming languages to name functions (such as format_date).
Here is the diff side by side:
I assume someone at Google updated this after Google released that new videos on URLs in Google Search and decided these changes were an improvement.
Forum discussion at X.
