What makes a good slug
The slug is the readable part of a URL after the domain: example.com/**best-cafes-sao-paulo**. Good slugs are short, lowercase, use hyphens between words, and describe the page. Google’s URL guidelines recommend readable words and hyphens rather than underscores or IDs.
The generator:
- lowercases and replaces spaces and punctuation with your separator (hyphen by default);
- removes accents (café → cafe) and spells out special letters (ß → ss, æ → ae);
- transliterates Cyrillic and Greek (Москва → moskva, Ukrainian detected automatically) so you don’t end up with percent-encoded gibberish;
- writes “&” as “and”;
- optionally removes stop words like the, a, of, and but keep the slug readable: “how-to-write” beats “write”;
- optionally trims to a maximum length at a word boundary.
Turn on Keep non-Latin letters to keep Chinese, Arabic, Hindi or other scripts as-is; modern browsers display them correctly, though they are percent-encoded when copied.
Changing slugs on live pages
If a page is already published, changing its slug changes its URL. Set up a 301 redirect from the old address, or you lose existing links and rankings.
Worked example
Here is what the URL Slug Generator returns for its built-in example. Settings used: Separator: Hyphen -; Remove stop words: off; Keep non-Latin letters: off. Click Try an example in the tool above to load it, then change it as you like.
The 10 Best Cafés in São Paulo (2025 Guide)
How to Write a Résumé & Cover Letter
Москва: путеводитель для начинающих
Αθήνα — ταξιδιωτικός οδηγόςthe-10-best-cafes-in-sao-paulo-2025-guide
how-to-write-a-resume-and-cover-letter
moskva-putevoditel-dlya-nachinayushchikh
athina-taxidiotikos-odigosQuestions
Should I use hyphens or underscores in URLs?
Hyphens. Google treats hyphens as word separators; underscores join words together.
Should I remove stop words from slugs?
Only when the slug stays clear without them. Short, readable slugs matter more than removing every “the” or “and”.
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