Marcia - 9:45 am on Nov 11, 2003 (gmt 0)

I have absolutely nothing to go by, no evidence, nothing - it's just a gnawing, gut-level feeling coupled with the fact that I'm way on the conservative side to begin with - but I'm cutting way back on keywords and hyphens in URLs.

On a new site, if for example I've got winter widgets and summer widgets, instead of using directories and filenames with full hyphenated phrases, I'm doing instead

/summer-widgets/mens.html
/summer-widgets/ladies.html
/winter-widgets/wool.html
/winter-widgets/rayon.html

Even where it could have been /winter-widgets/mens-wool-winter-widgets.html, etc.

I have to repeat and stress that I've got nothing whatsoever substantial to base this on. I figure I can always change pages around some and change a site structure and page naming later on if I decide to, and I've just gotten a little squeamish about this.

A load of hyphens have just begun to make me a bit uncomfortable, so I'm going by my feelings and doing what I'm more comfortable with for now. I started out doing all this by "instinct" at the beginning, and I've grown to trust it more over time. Things that have started to look overly seo'd and a bit spammy to me, even when I do them myself, might also look that way to others if there's ever a hand check. And I've not done badly at all with what's been kept fairly understated.

I wouldn't tell someone else not to, it's just my personal feeling and choice right now.

Added:

I have to add that I do have pages doing just fine with Ink that do have hyphens in the directory and filenames - but the sites don't have hyphens in the domain name also.