URL Slug Generator
Explain like I'm 5 (what even is this tool?)
Type or paste a heading. It gives you back the bit that goes on the end of a web address: lowercase, joined with hyphens, no weird characters, no accents. The thing that would turn "The Best Cafés in London" into "best-cafes-in-london".
Your slug
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Details
- Slug–
- Length0 characters
- Words kept0
- Words dropped0
- Truncated?No
Show workings
Writing a slug that earns its keep
A good URL slug is short, readable, and describes the page in three to five meaningful words. It should be stable: once indexed, changing a slug costs you link equity unless you manage the redirect carefully. Don't stuff keywords, and don't be cute. "best-running-shoes-2025" beats "top-10-must-have-amazing-running-shoes-you-need-now".
Stop words (the, a, of, and, with, for) add length without adding meaning in slug form. Strip them unless the meaning depends on them. "cat-in-the-hat" needs the stop words; "history-of-rome" does not.
Hyphens, underscores and the Google line
Use hyphens. Google's position on this has been public for well over a decade: hyphens separate words, underscores do not. Underscores exist in the tool because some platforms (notably certain older CMSes) require them for legacy reasons. If you have a choice, pick the hyphen.
Accented characters and transliteration
Browsers and modern servers handle Unicode URLs, but a slug like /café-münster/ will render as percent-encoded noise in shares, email clients, and old software. The tool transliterates accents to their nearest ASCII equivalent (café → cafe, Münster → munster), keeping the slug portable and readable.
Related calculators
Slugs are one signal. Here are the other quick SEO and writing hygiene checks.
Common questions
What makes a good URL slug?
Short, lowercase, hyphen-separated, three to five meaningful words, no punctuation. Google prefers readable slugs.
Hyphens or underscores?
Hyphens. Google treats them as word separators; underscores are read as part of the word.
How long should a slug be?
50 to 60 characters or fewer. The tool trims on a word boundary so you never end on a partial word.
Will this change my existing URLs?
No. It only generates slug text. Applying it to a live page is a platform job, and changing a published URL means setting up a 301 redirect so you don't lose traffic.