Google lately introduced “The Non-Canonical Cabinet,” a Search Central YouTube sequence discussing border case specialized SEO issues. On Oct. 14, they published the archetypal video of this new series, which addresses items that may and may not be included inside a domain name or URL way (such as emojis) as fine as whether using keywords inside URLs affects hunt rankings.
Gary Illyes and Cherry Prommawin are hosting this series. Google announced the sequence by posting a teaser video on Oct. 6, and asked all viewers to provision their own edge-case questions in the comments division of all post.
What The Series Is
A trailer released by Google on Oct. 6 says that the display “The Non-Canonical Cabinet” is a sitcom-style wit based off particular questions asked by website owners and the SEO industry. Here is how the event clarification puts it:
“These are questions that don’t pertain on a norm FAQ leaf but are motionless helpful for Search and generative AI features.”
In supplement to this Illyes hosted “How Search Works,” a five part video sequence on Search Central from 2024. This video sequence took users through the procedure of crawling, indexing and serving. “The Non-Canonical Cabinet” nevertheless starts alongside users asking questions concerning search, alternatively of starting alongside the basics.
Domains And URL Paths Follow Different Rules
ICANN and the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) have established the specialized guidelines for domain names. The IETF’s guidelines (RFC 1035, RFC 1123) contain allowing letters, numbers, and hyphens inside domain names; Prommawin stated that Google adheres to these identical standards.
The supplement of scripts to assistance languages another than Roman-based scripts (Chinese, Arabic) allows users to use domain names written in native scripts. These Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) are translated into Punycode (“xn--“), a cord that starts alongside ‘xn--‘. Browsers volition normally display IDNs in their native script. However, Illyes mentioned that several IDN scripts merge akin characters to those in another languages, which can confuse group and browsers. For example, a Cyrillic letter is extremely near in appearance to an English “p”.
According to him, the current net standards for domains do not authorize “emojis in the domain name.” A 2017 ICANN Board Resolution states that emoji are “disallowed by the current specialized standards for Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs).” The resolution does note that during emoji characters are prohibited under current standards, they can motionless be registered in certain country-code top-level domains (ccTLDs) at the second level.
The URL way has small limits. Illyes stated Googlebot volition crawl a way that contains an emoji, and “our scheme volition really procedure it.” Browsers percent-encode those characters, so the episode’s poultry emoji becomes %F0%9F%90%94 in the path.
He stated not all browser or social media app volition display the emoji, and several display “a cord of gibberish” in its place. Google’s URL construction documentation already covers the way side. It recommends percent encoding for non-ASCII characters and uses emoji in one of its examples.
Keywords And Word Separators
Illyes called keywords in a URL “an incredibly small signal.” “It really lone matters whenever we have entirely nothing alternatively to go on,” he said, giving the example of a location that’s seconds old alongside no content. Once Google sees content, keywords in the domain and URL “become basically irrelevant,” he said.
John Mueller called URL keywords a “very small ranking factor” in 2016 and a “very extremely lightweight factor” in 2021, statements I gathered whenever I looked at URLs as a ranking factor in 2023.
On separators, Illyes stated Google treats words joined by underscores in a URL way “as one lengthy word.” He added that this is sometimes fine, since Google may motionless be capable to use the words, and that Google recommends hyphens as the average term divider throughout the web. Google’s records gives the identical advice. It cites “historical reasons,” since underscores frequently grade concepts meant to remain together, specified as function names in programming.
Why This Matters
The archetypal Non-Canonical Cabinet event provides you alongside Google’s on-record responses to clients’ inquiries concerning emojis, non-English characters, and keywords in URLs. The way direction provided is redundant alongside the URL construction documentation, hence websites that are currently adhering to this document volition need no modifications.
The keyword reply from Illyes can be used as a citation for whenever your client desires URLs alongside elevated keyword density. He has indicated that there would be several value connected alongside specified pages lone if Google knew entirely nothing alternatively concerning them. In supplement to the complete information, the episode’s concluding recap tells viewers to halt trying to equivalent hunt results by including ample amounts of keyword data into their URLs.
The comments division of all video provides a forum anywhere you may bring up additional border cases that have not been covered inside the authoritative documentation.
Looking Ahead
The next Non-Canonical Cabinet event covers robots.txt. Neither video clarification gives a publish schedule, and the trailer and archetypal event went up eight days apart.
Featured Image: Screenshot from Google Search Central/YouTube, October 2026.
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