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You guys do realize the program is called ExpressionEngine, no spaces. 😊

Sure, it’s just a handy two worded name to use in this instance!

Dashes for me. People in the real world are used to dashes, and only use underscores when they’re typing and want to put a place for an answer to be filled in. Underscores scream “computer stuff” at me.

I use dashes for URL titles and underscore for templates and global variable names.

Personal preference. Dashes are easier to type in, no need to hold down the shift key.

But… but it’s not good manners to paste raw URLs onto a web page…!

Perhaps I should also add that my default CSS is to have links underlined only on mouseover, so that even a raw URL appearing on one of my sites would show underscores where they exist.

YMMV.

You guys do realize the program is called ExpressionEngine, no spaces. 😊

Sure, but as Andy Harris said, it is just a useful word to use in this instance. You can prove it by using any two words you like really.

Chances are, you all read this in a blog post by Matt Cutts, a software engineer at Google.

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/dashes-vs-underscores/

I’ve always found I can get pretty good results using Google or any other search-engine by looking for content—where dashes or underscores generally aren’t a problem.

I had always used underscores, or even camelCaps, but recently started going with dashs.
They don’t require the shift key #1, and #2 I had a strange thing happen with underscores on my web host.
They started showing up as % 5 F had to add the spaces or it gets parsed to a _ here lol.
http://crssp.com/demo/internet % 5 F sharing/

I don’t think I’ve ever noticed any other time an underscore being converted to % 5 F.

I sent a support ticket to my host to see if they could enlighten me on why it would be happening, weird huh?!? Actually I’m having troubles recreating the error, if you’ld call it that.
All i know is I don’t have URL rewrite, and if every underscore were to be indexed on google as % 5F that would be a problem.

Chances are, you all read this in a blog post by Matt Cutts, a software engineer at Google.

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/dashes-vs-underscores/

Thanks for pointing me back! It’s been a long time, I just couldn’t remember where it was I read it in the first place.

Well the article is, what, 3 years old? As McGehee said, good content is the main point.

Yep definitely good content and inbound links, they’re the two that will get you where you want to be.

Well the article is, what, 3 years old? As McGehee said, good content is the main point.

Yes, but the question was “Dashes or underscores in the URL?”, so to that end just doing the Google searches with a relevant two-worded search will prove it is still current practice to use hyphens in the URL over underscores.

Good content will, of course, keep the GoogleBot coming back for more to eat.

Those search examples with expression_engine vs. expression-engine are faulty, as that’s the wrong side of the coin.  The point isn’t about how Google treats dashes vs. underscores in search terms but in the URL.  So only the ‘expression engine’ search is relevant, and I think the search rankings of our site, EngineHosting, and thousands of other EE-powered sites using underscore separators show that what’s used in the URL is rather insignificant, if it matters at all.  It’s silly to assume that Google’s search algorithm both isn’t smart enough to handle both equally well, and that it hasn’t changed in three years.  So, I’m with Simon.  Semantics is king.

As stated many times before, your content, the relevance of your content in context to places that link to you, consistency in how you use and spell certain words in your content even. Google’s ranking is highly complex and something like the - vs _ in a URL is such a very very small fraction of the puzzle its not really worth fretting over, really.

Take a look at the URL of the indented entry under spot #1 after following the first link below.  You will notice that web and hosting are highlighted, and not the _ you will also notice further down the page there are sites with - in the URL between web and hosting did not help much, but you will get from the first example with the _ that its treated as a word separator as the words are highlighted separately.  Its the whole package, and how you present things on your site, and how others present links to you from their own articles, pages, etc.  Its really a cat and mouse game to be honest 😊

Google Search: load balanced web hosting

Oh and for the folks that will say you can’t tell if Google is treating it as two words or a two word phrase even from this first link.  Try this:

Google Search #2: load balanced hosting web  😉