Hyphen or Underscore

tansks · #1 (**permalink**) 03-01-2007, 10:04 PM

Hyphen or Underscore, which is better in term of SEO? Can any share your point of view. Thank you.

domain.com/keyword-keyword.htm
or
domain.com/keyword_keyword.htm

limcs · #2 (**permalink**) 04-01-2007, 03:04 PM

I vote for 'hypen'!

Since everybody is using it, of course.

robot · #3 (**permalink**) 04-01-2007, 03:19 PM

I don't think there's much differrence between the two. if you do some search query on search engine, you would see both hyphen and underscore equally appear on urls. the important thing for seo is the keyword instead.

hairionline · #4 (**permalink**) 04-01-2007, 03:41 PM

i agreed... the keyword

tansks · #5 (**permalink**) 04-01-2007, 08:46 PM

What about if not hyphen or underscore between keywords? Will this affect ranking?

ksstudio · #6 (**permalink**) 04-01-2007, 08:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tansks

Hyphen or Underscore, which is better in term of SEO? Can any share your point of view. Thank you.

domain.com/keyword-keyword.htm
or
domain.com/keyword_keyword.htm

I vote hyphen as well. Not because of SEO, but for human eyes. Underscore is not so noticeable if the word was underlined.

tolkein · #7 (**permalink**) 04-01-2007, 11:32 PM

It doesn't matter if it's underscore, hypen or joined - they're all the same to search engines, i.e. the search engines are smart enough to read them.

ksstudio: users are not going to be concerned with keywords in the file name. if they're there, they're most likely for SEO reasons.

robot · #8 (**permalink**) 05-01-2007, 06:12 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tansks

Hyphen or Underscore, which is better in term of SEO? Can any share your point of view. Thank you.

domain.com/keyword-keyword.htm
or
domain.com/keyword_keyword.htm

the thread here goes for SEO functionality. so it makes no difference whether its a hyphen or underscore. search engine mostly rate a site by its keyword especially within its content or meta tag

yipguseng · #9 (**permalink**) 05-01-2007, 10:13 AM

as robot said, in term of SEO, is the same...

whether to put hyphen or underscore is just ur own preference to ease ur viewing satisfaction/comfort only

ReadyCompanies · #10 (**permalink**) 05-01-2007, 01:39 PM

Dashes are better according to Matt Cutts

Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO » Dashes vs. underscores

and there is so much info in Google - for which is better
hyphen and underscore - Google Search

but Matt Cutts (from Google) opinion would be believed better

chris79 · #11 (**permalink**) 05-01-2007, 04:04 PM

thanks for sharing, dude

robot · #12 (**permalink**) 05-01-2007, 07:20 PM

well thats a good explanation

tansks · #13 (**permalink**) 06-01-2007, 06:38 PM

Thanks for all feedback. I think hyphen will be better since domain name also can contain hyphen, but not underscore.

robot · #14 (**permalink**) 06-01-2007, 07:10 PM

yeah, maybe I should use hyphen too in my next update of my cms

vincevincevince · #15 (**permalink**) 18-01-2007, 09:14 PM

I'm afraid that Google has ruled on this and declared underscore to be the winner. Hyphens mean two words joined together, whereas underscores actually replace a space and have been used as such for a very long time.

Personally I've found that a + works as well as a _

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