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As we know, keywords in the URL are helpful with your SEO, for example, /keyword1-keyword2, or keyword1_keyword2. We know that Google is able to identify the two keywords.

However, what if it was more like, /url=keyword1,keyword2 ?

Would they also be read by Google?

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    Underscores are NOT keyword separators in the URL for Google. It is a long standing issue that Google will not identify they keywords if you use an underscore.
    – Stephen Ostermiller ♦
    Commented Sep 1, 2016 at 9:10
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    Stuffing keywords in the URL is unlikely to help SEO unless it enhances usabality. See: Are keywords in URLs good SEO or needlessly redundant?
    – Stephen Ostermiller ♦
    Commented Sep 1, 2016 at 9:12
  • No years ago Matt Cutts announced that underscores are now keyword separators
    – Source
    Commented Sep 1, 2016 at 9:15
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    Matt Cutts has never said that. The latest video I can find youtube.com/watch?v=AQcSFsQyct8 from 2011 still says: "we join on underscore and separate on dash." Google has no plans to change that. Matt Cutts also explains it in a blog post from 2005: Dashes vs Underscores
    – Stephen Ostermiller ♦
    Commented Sep 1, 2016 at 9:23
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    John Mueller was quoted here seroundtable.com/… saying that underscores vs dashes doesn't matter. I think that he is saying that the effect of keywords in URLs is so small that it isn't something worth worrying about.
    – Stephen Ostermiller ♦
    Commented Sep 1, 2016 at 10:03

2 Answers 2

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Browser will encode input, according to the character-set used in your page.

I personally avoid , in url structure, because of encoding. It's %2C.

So your url would be like /url=keyword1%2Ckeyword2.

Commas are allowed in the filename part of a URL, but are reserved characters in the domain.

* From the URI RFC:

2.2. Reserved Characters

Many URI include components consisting of or delimited by, certain special characters. These characters are called "reserved", since their usage within the URI component is limited to their reserved purpose. If the data for a URI component would conflict with the reserved purpose, then the conflicting data must be escaped before forming the URI.

 reserved    = ";" | "/" | "?" | ":" | "@" | "&" | "=" | "+" |
                "$" | ","

The "reserved" syntax class above refers to those characters that are allowed within a URI, but which may not be allowed within a particular component of the generic URI syntax

While it's definitely possible to use commas in URLs, it's not a widely used practice, nor is it recommended.

Further reading: https://www.searchenginenews.com/sample/content/are-you-using-commas-in-your-urls-heres-what-you-need-to-know

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  • Nice answer. Have never seen commas in url in my 10 years of online life.
    – Ankur Jain
    Commented Sep 1, 2016 at 12:00
  • You don’t have to percent-encode , in the URI path (see list of allowed characters).
    – unor
    Commented Sep 2, 2016 at 14:07
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Commas are not typically used in URLs and are not recommended. You should stick to using either underscores or hyphens/dashes. That being said, Google recommends hyphens/dashes, so I would go with that: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/76329?hl=en

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  • The question was not "Should I put commas in my URL's?" It is a sensible question to ask, if you are supporting a legacy site that happens to have commas in URLs. And this doesn't answer the question at all.
    – Tim Grant
    Commented Nov 18, 2016 at 17:48

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