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Underscores or Hyphens as URL Separators?

by Terrence Taitt
6 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Does anyone know, from personal experience or observation, whether or not it's best to use the hyphen or the underscore as a URL separator?
#hyphens #separators #underscores #url
  • Profile picture of the author thecableguy
    You can't use an underscore, one domain registrar actually came back as available, but was unable to register it.
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    • Profile picture of the author danshea
      I am testing this right now. You can use an underscore as a folder off the main domain. I have a site up where the pages off the main domain use a hyphen, and the folder I made for the forum uses an underscore in the folder name
      example: 123.com/page-name.html
      vs. 123.com/folder_name

      I will let you know if I find that one works better over the other.

      Dan
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  • Profile picture of the author iAmNameLess
    What I want to know is, are hyphens actually forcing the words to be a space, or would it include it all together.

    Ex: S-E-O would that still be considered SEO or would it force it to be S E O?
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    • Profile picture of the author paulgl
      Hyphens are needed when words slur into unwanted words.
      Also when consecutive words might end and start with the same letter,
      making the url a type-in nightmare. odddays or odd-days?

      People understand hyphens, they don't understand underscores.

      odd_day? Search engines may see that as one word, "odd_day"
      Emphasis on may.

      Do your stuff for people. The search engines will follow.


      It is an old video, but good tips never go out of style.

      There may be certain cases where one would actually want to use an underscore,
      but I would digress from my main point.

      Paul
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      If you were disappointed in your results today, lower your standards tomorrow.

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  • Profile picture of the author InitialEffort
    Hyphen, always
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  • Profile picture of the author Terrence Taitt
    Remember folks, Matt Cutts has Google's best interest at heart, so I wouldn't take everything he says as Gospel.
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