DaniWeb IT Discussion Community - are hyphenated url names good or bad?

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- - are hyphenated url names good or bad? (http://www.daniweb.com/forums/thread35604.html)

Re: are hyphenated url names good or bad?

Quote:

Originally Posted by nyashaC (Post 424624)

For example buy-WidgetB-Cheap.com would actually have a negative effect on SEO, as it might be seen as an attempt at SERP spamming.

If you see yourself having more than one hyphen STOP!

That's not true. There are lots of webpages, mostly articles and blog entries, that have a lot of hyphens in their URLs and they rank very well. The whole, "too many hyphens means spam" thing is a myth.

Re: are hyphenated url names good or bad?

Apparently, having "-" in the URL is a very good thing, unlike having "_".

If you consider...
http://www.my-cat-and-mat-site.com/t...sat/on-the-mat
http://www.mycatandmatsite.com/thecatsat/onthemat
http://www.mycatandmatsite.com/the_cat_sat/on_the_mat

Okay... basically the same information, but with/without - or _.

Now it appears that Google will look at Hyphenated words as indiviudal words.
Thus my-cat-and-mat-site can be read as...
my cat and mat site
... and thats about it.

It will read conjoined words as individual words, but will interpret the space/break that fits the search pattern.
Thus mycatandmatsite could be read as ...
my cat and mat site
my catan mats it
myca tan atsi
... more conotations - but that doesn't score any more points!

As for the page titles etc... the Underscore is a major pain. Though in a way it is fantastic if someone types in the title of the page... but if they only enter in partially matching terms, it seems that you will not get the same scoring.

Re: are hyphenated url names good or bad?

Quote:

Originally Posted by autocrat (Post 424964)

Google just announced that underscores will have the same effect as dashes so this will no longer be true in the very near future.

Re: are hyphenated url names good or bad?

Thank god for that!

I've made 2 topics and sent 3 emails... no official response at all from them... but maybe they do listen to people after all.

Re: are hyphenated url names good or bad?

Quote:

Google just announced that underscores will have the same effect as dashes so this will no longer be true in the very near future.

Good news for those who loves using dashes.

Re: are hyphenated url names good or bad?

Quote:

Originally Posted by x3mario (Post 426606)

Good news for those who loves using dashes.

I think you mean underscores. ;)

Re: are hyphenated url names good or bad?

We have some URL with underscores, and I had read that dashes were better for SEO.

I am glad to hear that I was sure if we were going to have to fix those. Hopefully that gets implemented soon.

Great post.

Re: are hyphenated url names good or bad?

Yes, but mostly I think the file names for eg. words.words/words_42.jpg is better than words.words/wrods-45.jpg.

Steve

Re: are hyphenated url names good or bad?

Quote:

Originally Posted by beamup (Post 428459)

Yes, but mostly I think the file names for eg. words.words/words_42.jpg is better than words.words/wrods-45.jpg.

Steve

Unfortunately the opposite is true. Dashes are better then underscores. All search engines recognize dashes as a keyword separator but Google doesn't yet recognize underscores as a keyword separator.

Re: are hyphenated url names good or bad?

Do you think its worth redoing all domain names with underscores to change them to domains with dashes?