Thread

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.

I think you give Google too much credit.  😉

I don’t really know either way because nobody here really knows how Google works.  You can argue either way about URL’s but the bottom line is you probably aren’t going to get a first page ranking on a keyword which solely exists in your URL.

I would say the Matt Cutts blog post gives me the teensy weensy, itsy bitsy push I need to use dashes rather than underscores.  I don’t buy the argument on URL readability either.  URL readability went out the window a long time ago for me.  There are just too many situations where the URL is used to shuttle non human friendly information for me to even take the effort to raise my eyes enough to look.

Unless I see something clearly stated in the Google webmaster guidelines, then I would stick with the Matt Cutts article. 

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.

Sure, but what if Google treats them the same in the URL or in the content.  Maybe this sounds stupid and Google should be better but I don’t have as much faith in the intelligence of Google as everyone else does.  Google search is still just a crappy web app just like anything else out there and search is still in its infancy.

If you guys want to keep your searches strictly to URL’s then why not use the URL operator?

Try doing a search for this…

inurl:asdf-asdf

vs this…

inurl:asdf_asdf

Notice that for “inurl:asdf-asdf” you get the following…

asdf+asdf
asdf/asdf
asdfasdf
asdf-asdf

If you do a search for “inurl:asdf asdf” (with the space) then you also get results for asdf-asdf.

But if you do a search for inurl:asdf_asdf then all you get is the underscore versions.

My conclusion…

Google is stupid.  You all put too much faith into them.  IF (IF!!) you lived in a world where you could only rely on your URL’s for search results and you want to capture the widest audience then use dashes.

EDIT:  Though I do agree that the URL is not as important as the content.  As Nevin says, it is just another piece in the puzzle.

John, you’re still looking at search terms, and going down the same incorrect path.  It’s a leap of logic, or a “what if” scenario that amounts to nothing more than FUD.  Just because Google acts in a certain manner when it perceives that human is searching for an underscore has absolutely no bearing on whether or not it does or doesn’t apply higher or lower rankings to content with - vs. _ in the URLs.

Having read this lot, I think it’s really more of a personal preference thing as far as the URLs go.I’ll stick with the dash because it’s what I’m used to.

Has anyone ever seen a domain name with an underscore? I’ve seen plenty with dashes (jambor-ee.com and train-ee.com to name two).

In domain names, only lowercase a-z, dots (.), and hyphen (-) are allowed per rfc1738.

No, but that’s because letters, numbers and the dash are the only legal characters to be used in domain names. There are some local deviations of this rule (like, must not start with a number, or things like that), but underscores are generally not allowed.

Ah I was going to ask if they were even allowed but assumed they were as they feature elsewhere in the URL. Glad I posted this, have got a lot of useful info!

Actually I was looking at the scheme naming rules and not the host.  I thought plus looked funny in there, and indeed, it’s just letters, numbers, dash, dot, and the dash cannot begin or end your domain name.

John, you’re still looking at search terms, and going down the same incorrect path.  It’s a leap of logic, or a “what if” scenario that amounts to nothing more than FUD.  Just because Google acts in a certain manner when it perceives that human is searching for an underscore has absolutely no bearing on whether or not it does or doesn’t apply higher or lower rankings to content with - vs. _ in the URLs.

Derek, I think we are talking about two different things.  You are talking about ranking and I am talking about how Google searches text.

However, you can’t rank at all for “Expression Engine” if your entire site uses references to Expression_Engine.”  You could rank (somewhere) for “Expression Engine” if your entire site references Expression-Engine.”  I am not saying you would rank better or worse depending on the term you use, but you have to use the correct term to rank at all.

As you can see from searches, your URL is used for finding search results along with the rest of the content of your site.  So the URL is content.  Some sites (picture, video or Flash heavy for example) can use all the content help they can get.  You might as well use a URL that helps you.  In this case, for Google you should use the dash.

That’s a tremendous leap, John.  And I think we’re both making the same point, though, that if you’re counting on your URL naming scheme for Google rankings, your site is a lost cause.  If there were measurable impact by dash vs. underscore, people who make the change would jump in their rankings, and that frankly doesn’t occur.  Just like the days of yore with meta keywords, there aren’t any one trick ponies in SEO to make you suddenly relevant.

I am not talking about rankings at all, I am talking about content.  I don’t know about ranking.  All I know about is what I can test right now with search.

Though content and rankings are related in the sense that you can’t rank for keywords that are not on your site.  If you have a blank site, you can’t rank for much.  But you can rank for your URL.  In other words, even a blank site can come up with a search for the exact URL.  That means the URL could be considered searchable content.  Maybe it has little impact, or maybe in extreme cases it is the only content searchable on your site (blank site.)

When I refer to rank I am talking about nothing more than simply showing up in search results.  I am not referring to showing up high on the list.  Ranking means you could rank as the last result on the last page of the search results, but you still rank.

I never said that using dashes will INCREASE your rank.  I am just saying that using foo-bar will get you in the index for foo, bar, foo-bar, foo/bar, foo+bar and many other combo’s but foo_bar will only get you indexed for foo_bar.

I am just saying that using foo-bar will get you in the index for foo, bar, foo-bar, foo/bar, foo+bar and many other combo’s but foo_bar will only get you indexed for foo_bar.

I’m a little confused by this…when I search in Google, I assume that the bold words are words that match my search. So if I search for ‘veerle form’, I get a number one result back which looks like:

veerle.duoh.com/blog/comments/styling_forms_in_css/

Does that not indicate that it has indexed for form, which means that ‘styling_forms_in_css’ works just as well as ‘styling-forms-in-css’ would have?

Yes, Andy, you are correct, which was my point in my original response to this thread, as was Nevin’s.  John is taking a healthy dose of something, and I would like one, please.

I really tend to think that the character separator is a throw away, maybe google does too?
My mention of camelCaps is probably better just for code like css classes, id’s and the like. Dashes or underscores would be preferrable to that for page names.