URL Slug Generator & Cleaner
Paste messy URLs, get clean slugs — plus the redirect list you will need if you change them.
Cleaned slugs
| Original | Cleaned |
|---|
The redirect list is formatted old, new — paste it straight into the .htaccess Redirect Generator.
What the uRL Slug Generator & Cleaner does
URLs accumulate damage. A CMS appends a file extension, an editor pastes a title containing an
accented character, a date folder gets added by a blog template, someone saves a page as
-FINAL, and a decade later the site is full of addresses nobody can read or share.
This cleaner takes URLs or plain titles and reduces them to short readable slugs. It decodes
percent-encoding first, so Men%27s%20Trail%20Shoes becomes readable before anything else
happens. It strips the query string, drops date folders and file extensions, removes the
-FINAL and -v2 suffixes that escape from people's desktops, flattens
accents so chaussures survives and é does not become
%C3%A9, removes stop words in English and French, and caps the result at a word limit
you set.
The folder option controls how much of the path survives. Keeping the first folder preserves a
useful section like /blog or /guides while discarding the deep nesting
underneath it, which is usually the right compromise: it keeps the URL informative without letting it
run four levels deep.
Collision detection matters in bulk. Aggressive cleaning can map two different pages onto the same
slug — /red-running-shoes and /running-shoes-red both reduce to the
same thing once stop words go and the word limit bites. Any collision is flagged in red, because
publishing it would mean one page overwriting the other.
The Copy as redirect list button formats the output as old, new pairs, which
is exactly the input format of the .htaccess Redirect Generator. Changing URLs without redirects
throws away every link pointing at the old ones.
How to use it
- Paste your URLs or titles, one per line.
- Set the word limit and decide how much of the folder path to keep.
- Check for red collision warnings and lengthen the word limit if any appear.
- Copy the redirect list and feed it into the redirect generator before changing anything live.
A worked example
Four messy inputs and what they become:
| Before | After |
|---|---|
/blog/2026/03/Best_Running-Shoes_For_The_Flat_Feet_Guide_FINAL.html | /blog/best-running-shoes-flat-feet |
/products/CATEGORY/Men%27s%20Trail%20Shoes%20-%20Size%2010.php | /products/mens-trail-shoes-size-10 |
Comment choisir ses chaussures de running — le guide complet ! | /choisir-chaussures-running-guide-complet |
/services/index.php?page=gait-analysis | /services |
The last row shows a limitation worth knowing. When the meaningful part of a URL lives in a query
parameter rather than the path, cleaning the path alone loses it. That URL needs a human decision
— probably /services/gait-analysis — which is a reminder that bulk cleaning
produces a draft to review, not a final answer to deploy unread.
Frequently asked questions
Should I clean up the URLs on an existing site?
Only with a clear reason and a redirect for every change. Each changed URL costs a little ranking equity in the move and breaks any saved link. Cleaning up during a planned migration is sensible; doing it to tidy URLs that are merely imperfect usually is not.
How many words should a slug contain?
Three to five is a good target. Long enough to describe the page, short enough to read at a glance in a search result and survive being pasted into a message.
Why remove stop words?
They add length without adding meaning to a machine or a reader scanning a URL. That said, dropping them can make a slug read oddly — /guide-choosing-shoes versus /guide-to-choosing-shoes. The option is there so you can judge per site.
What happens to non-Latin characters?
Accented Latin letters are flattened to their base forms, so é becomes e. Scripts with no Latin equivalent, such as Chinese or Arabic, have no safe transliteration and are removed — for those languages, write the slug in Latin characters deliberately.