72.7% of Google's #1 Results Don't Have the Search Keyword in Their Web Address

A business owner reads an SEO checklist that says every page needs the target keyword in its URL. She renames twenty pages, sets up redirects, loses a few links along the way and waits for the rankings to rise. They do not, because the pages beating her mostly never followed that rule.

A URL is a page's web address, and the slug is the part after the domain, such as /water-heater-repair. Putting the keyword in it is one of the most repeated items on on-page SEO checklists, and changing URLs on an existing website has real costs: redirects, broken links and lost history. Knowing whether top results actually follow the rule tells a business whether that work is worth it.

They mostly do not. 72.7% of the web pages ranking first on Google do not contain every word of the search in their web address, and 85.3% do not use it as a clean slug. The first result is no more likely to have the keyword in its URL than the results at positions 2 to 6. The length of the keyword matters far more than the position.

On September 23, 2026 we searched 20,000 US keywords on Google (desktop) and kept every top 10 organic result, the ordinary listings below the ads, 166,403 results in all, including 20,000 first-place results. For each result we checked two things.

First, whether every word of the keyword appears anywhere in the web address, domain included, in any order. Second, whether the keyword appears as an exact slug: the words in order as one joined phrase, such as water-heater-repair for "water heater repair". We compared both rates by ranking position, by search intent (what the person searching wants) and by the number of words in the keyword.

Only 27.3% of first-place results contain all the words of the keyword somewhere in their web address, and 14.7% use it as an exact slug. Across all top 10 results the figures are almost the same: 26.3% have all the words and 14.6% an exact slug. Nearly three in four pages that win the top spot do so without the keyword in their address.

That makes sense once you look at what ranks. Homepages rank under a bare domain, articles often carry a short or dated slug, and large websites use product codes or category paths. Google reads the page itself to decide what it is about, so the web address is a small signal at most.

If a keyword-rich URL helped a page win, first place would have the highest match rate. It does not. Positions 1 to 6 all sit between 27.2% and 27.7% for all-words matches, and between 14.7% and 15.9% for exact slugs. Rates fall only at positions 8 and 9, to about 21% to 22%.

At tenth place the all-words rate is 23.2% and the exact-slug rate 10.3%. A keyword in the URL does not separate the winner from the rest of page one, so it is not what a page is missing when it sits at fourth place instead of first.

The number of words in the keyword matters far more than position. For two-word keywords, 53.5% of first-place web addresses contain both words. For three words the share drops to 29.9%, for four words to 16.4%, and for five or more words to 7.2%. Long, specific searches almost never find their exact wording in the top result's address, yet those pages still rank first.

Intent matters too. Informational searches, where people want to learn something, have the highest match rate at first place (37%), because how-to articles tend to carry their topic in the slug. Navigational searches follow at 31.9%, since brand names often sit in the domain. Transactional searches, from people ready to buy or hire, have the lowest at 21.6%.

Do not rename existing URLs to add keywords. The top results show little benefit, and changing a URL means setting up redirects and risking the links and history the old address has built. If a page is not ranking, its web address is rarely the reason.

For new pages, use a short, readable slug that names the topic, such as /water-heater-repair, and stop there. Then spend the effort on what the page says: a clear title, a direct answer to the search, and the details a buyer needs.

Those are the changes that move rankings, and they are the focus of our on page seo services.

Embed this research

Cite this study