whether hyphen or underscore. I'm still concern more about keywords within the contents. that is what the spider are going after anyway

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Thanks robot... one very important use for the URL, however, is for Adsense - especially on a vast site or with rapidly changing URLs. If a forum has a URL like /showthread.php?t=13423 then Adsense is very unfocused until the MediaBot has assessed the page. If the URL is written as /choosing_new_computers.htm then Adsense will instantly give ads about choosing new computers, right from the first post.

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most web programs now have seo url plugins.
on most attempt to search on the SE for any keyword, it usually appear that the searched keyword is located on either on the page title or part of the page content.
i'm not sure how much the url play a major role on this (whether using hyphen or underscore) but I just do as what SE spider looking for, the page title and contents

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Err... mr. vince(3x)... is that really true? is Matt Cutts articles is obsolete?

can you prove it... please...

i'm going to buy a domain... so i'm concern about this...

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Ooops, my apologies... Google's statement was the same as later confirmed by MC - that it should be hypens not underscores.

%20 is, according to Google, fine and correct to use but ugly. No comment on the use of +.

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on top of that, if you look at blogger.com (which is another google.com service) they are using hyphen instead of underscore. that may explain which is more prefered by google itself

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seo is strictly on keyword and links into your website

but as a human it is easier to type hyphen as you don't need to press shift+key.

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phew!!... thanks for the info... i didn't buy my domain yet... i think about early next month...

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found this when i was reading bout SEO thing, might amplify the status of the use of hyphen : http://www.seo-blog.com/url-update.php

Be it hypen or underscore, for seo sake, it doesn't really matter. I don't think Google will rank you better just because you use a hypen or an underscore.

I would suggest spend your effort on researching the best keyword and building the content. It not worth the effort to worry about hypen or underscore.