Introducing web search monitors

What is a slug?

The human-readable, URL-safe portion of a URL that identifies a specific page, usually a lowercased, hyphenated version of the page title.

In https://www.context.dev/blog/how-to-scrape-a-website, the slug is how-to-scrape-a-website. Slugs are generated by lowercasing a title, replacing spaces with hyphens, stripping punctuation and non-ASCII characters, and de-duplicating against existing slugs.

Slugs matter for SEO because they're the most visible piece of a URL after the domain. Search engines use them as a ranking signal, and humans use them to decide whether to click a link in a SERP. A descriptive slug (/blog/clearbit-logo-api-shutdown) outperforms a numeric one (/blog/12345) on both fronts.

For CMS implementation, treat the slug as a stable identifier. Renaming a published article should not change the slug, set up a redirect from the old slug if the title actually needs to change.

In the wild

  • https://www.context.dev/glossary/web-crawler, slug is web-crawler
  • https://example.com/products/wireless-headphones, slug is wireless-headphones
All glossary terms

FAQ

How long should a slug be?

Three to five words is the sweet spot, descriptive enough to be useful, short enough not to truncate in SERPs.

Should slugs include stop words?

Skip filler words ("a," "the," "of") unless removing them changes the meaning. /glossary/what-is-a-proxy is fine; /glossary/what-is-the-a-proxy is not.

Should I change a slug after publishing?

No. Set up a 301 redirect from the old slug to the new one if you must rename.

Related terms

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