Page names: dashes, underscores, or 'nothing' in page names

How do dashes, underscores or 'nothing' in page names affect search engines

[JaySmith]

I have a large existing web site, however, I am about to add several hundred pages and am trying to determine if the web page names (file names) should or should not use dashes and/or underscores as word separators to enhance search engine rankings.

I am *not* refering to the domain name.

Example:

www.mydomain.com/AlandStamps.html
www.mydomain.com/Aland-Stamps.html
www.mydomain.com/Aland_Stamps.html

I have found discussion of these issues regarding domain names, however, I have not found anything useful regarding if the major search engines are likely to do a better job (higher ranking) if there are dashes or underscores of the *page names* themselves.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Jay

[CygnusX1]

Hi JaySmith,

I have found that dashes are always better then underscores or lumping the keywords together in a web-address for internal pages.