The underscore character

... how do search engines treat it?

[austtr]

A recent thread that touched on file naming conventions recommended the hyphen character (blue-widget.htm) in two word descriptors because the search engines ignored it, effectively seeing just blue widgets.htm as the file name.

Can anyone speak with authority on the use of underscores (blue_widget.htm) Is the underscore also ignored or should file names using underscores be changed?

[sidyadav]

[webmasterworld.com...]

says it all!

Sid

[Mohamed_E]

I believe that the advantage of keywords in the URL is pretty small, so by and large I am not changing existing URLs that contain underscores. But I am using hyphens in all new file names where appropriate.

[g1smd]

There is a lot to lose if you start changing filenames on an established site, so you are probably doing the right thing by only using this on new pages.

[austtr]

g1smd

How so?

Once the renamed pages have been spidered and appear in the SE index, won't the old underscored versions just fall out of the index?

I can understand there would be 404 problems if the original page URL's are in a lot of bookmarks. But most bookmarks will be to the home page which in 99 cases out of 100, is named "index" or "default" and is not going to change.

[ergophobe]

As a searcher, I find it aggravating that Google does not take punctuation of any sort into account, be it hyphens, periods, commas or whatever. When you search on "these-three-words" you often get

"... in times like these. Three words tell us all...."

I thought it was the same for underscore, but I guess not - underscore gets treated as an underscore, but hypen as a space.

Accents are trickier and I haven't figured that out, but that's another topic....

Tom

[thehittmann]

darn i didnt know this either, i've been using underscores.

[g1smd]

>> How so? <<

>> Once the renamed pages have been spidered and appear in the SE index, won't the old underscored versions just fall out of the index? <<

On an established site, changing your existing page names means that you will lose your incoming links and their page rank. In the short term you'll need to put in a 301 redirect so that visitors clicking through don't get a 404 page, and you'll need to contact anyone that links to your site and tell them the new URL for the page.

It will take a few months for Google to drop the old pages and list the new ones in their place. I would work on that slowly, rather than changing the whole site over all at once.

[IeuanJ]

The main disadvantage of changing the names is people will have links to your pages wont work anymore, either as page links or as favourites, for example I regularly bookmark articles within a site for reference as well as the site home page.

To be honest the source file naem has only a small bearing on the search rank anyway, much more important is a correct page title and meta-description plus of course the page content.

In fact setting your file names to show as seperate words in a search engine will cause more problems than it solves. Not to you of course because it will mean more people get to see the page in their query. However everyone searching for the band "blue" will also get your page listed, whether they want it or not.

I often find it amusing and slightly worrying when people are trying to get their site higher or in more searches becasue all it does is confuse matter for the searcher. If I want to serch for a "blue widget" I will most likely pick up your page becasue of the page title and not the file name.

If you want to name pages like this in future thats fine but changing old ones gives next to no advantage in my opinion.

[robert adams]

the advantage of using hyphens is this;
your page is about blue widgets

you name the page bluewidget.html
people type in blue widget (notice space) they don't type in
bluewidget (notice no space), based just on the file name only, the search engine will never show your page because it is looking for blue or widget or blue widget but not bluewidget.

get it, the search engine considers a space the same as the word "or" and sometimes "and". Keep in mind the SEs are just machines, they only do exactly what they are told. They can't read your mind. If you tell it to find blue and widget they will, but not bluewidget. If you tell it to find bluewidget it will but not blue widget.

luck,
robert

[thehittmann]

without a doubt im going to change the file names of a couple of my pages.

[bondjamesbond]

Oh. And there was me changing page names to underscores! Oh well, looks like I am changing them all to hyphens now..

Is that the definitive word now - hyphens are better than underscores? I don't want to be changing them all back once they are changed!

[thehittmann]

I ended up only changing 1 page name.
I thought it over and my other pages already have good serp standings I don't want to take change names then take a chance that google is going to add them quickly, I'd rateher stay where I am than go backwards at this stage.
Next time I do a major re-vamp, I'll change them all.

[robert adams]

The underscore is just an old programmers trick to make file names easier to read. blue_widget_number_1_for_today is much easier to read than bluewidgetnumber1fortoday.
Also, because spaces in a file name is a big no-no in Unix/Linux, they are replaced with the underscore.

luck,
robert

[limbo]

I remember reading here, that Google recognises The hyphen as a space and the underscore as a connective character. Thus:

Blue-widgets would return SERPS [google.com] for: blue-widgets and blue widgets

whereas blue_widgets would only return SERPS [google.com] for: blue_widgets

Ta

Limbo

[robert adams]

I remember reading here, that Google recognises The hyphen as a space and the underscore as a connective character. Thus:

Blue-widgets would return SERPS for: blue-widgets and blue widgets

whereas blue_widgets would only return SERPS for: blue_widgets

Ta

Limbo

correct, blue-widgets would also return blue and return widgets

robert