Underscore in 3td level domain

3td level domain name, underscore

[sugar66]

I'm building 3td level domain trying to optimize my site. Unfortunatly I have to use "underscore" inside the domain name:

www.word_word2.namesite.tld

I'm wondering if this character could hurt my SEP.

Any one had experience with this?

Thank you

[gethan]

Hi sugar66 - welcome to WebmasterWorld.

It may cause problems with SE's as they may adhere strictly to the rules that a host name should be 'a-z', '0-9' or a '-' characters only - this was set in the very early days of the internet - 1982 or something in an RFC. Since then lots has changed, proposals and some support for internationalised domain names but not necessarily the code in XYZ search engine.

Is there anything to stop you using

www.word-word2.example.com? ie. a hyphen rather than an underscore?

[piskie]

word_word2 would be treated as a single word or string of characters, not 2 separated words.

A frontline SE would look for an exact match from a search entry that inclded the underscore separator.

[sugar66]

Thanks! I'll go using hypen 3td level domain.
=))

[peterdaly]

I believe an underscore "_" is not a valid DNS character. In some instances it may work however, as not all DNS servers or "clients" enforce all (or even many) of the rules.