How to seperate two keywords in a folder

ist " - " the only way?

[globay]

I need to seperate two keywords in a folder name domain .com / keyword1-keyword2 /
for various reasons (using URL rewriting, that gererates the title from that folder's name, ander there is a difference between "word1 word2" and "word1-word2" is just one.)

So I was wondering, if there is an other way to separte these two words in the folder name. It should be separted so that Google will notice the two words.

(For exampe: a search in Google returned about the same results for "w1;w2" and "w1 w2", but they are completly different for "w1_w2"). So I just decided to separate them with a semicolon.

Now, today I checked the stats with webalizer, and it can't read the folders separated (leaving away everything that comes after the ";". (The site is not registered in Google yet, so I don't know its effect!)

Do you know of a working way?

Thanks!
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globay

[chris_f]

Hi, Hope this helps.

I generally use "_" or "-" to seperate the keywords. I've had no problems.

Chris

[globay]

Yes, as far as I know both ways for fine, but I think there is no profit
from naming it word1_word2, since google won't recognize word1 and word2,
am I right?

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globay

[djgreg]

google will recognize word1 and word2 if they are seperated by a "-" or a "_" .
Google would recognize it as one word if written without seperation "word1Word2"

[gingerbreadman]

I asked a similar question the other day...
[webmasterworld.com...]

For what it's worth GoogleGuy prefers hyphens:
[webmasterworld.com...]

[atadams]

I thought we had decided that Google indexes the underscore, so "key_word" is "key_word" and "key-word" is "key" and "word".

Here are Maccas's examples:

key_word [google.com] vs. key-word [google.com]

[globay]

Look at this:

though the file's name, title and text contain key_word google can't find the word key or word!

test [google.de]

Basically I wanted to know now I could replace "-" while still getting the same results!

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globay

[Mohamed_E]

There is a very clear example on my site (translated into widgetspeak as per TOS :) )

I have a file called mt_widget (named before I understood how Google parses filenames) and a newer one (on a different topic) called mt-widget-winter. Doing an "allinurl:mt widget" search returns the hyphenated file and not the one with underscores.

Note that the search showed no results with an underscore, but several with a space represented as %20 (something that was discussed in another thread recently).

[werty]

so i built my site with all _ seperating the keywords.

would it be a good idea to change them all to hyphens?

and if it is a good idea is the best way to do this redo the entire structure of the page with these, but also leave the underscore files on the site all pointing to the new hyphenated urls? that way the pages do not come up as missing.

the one thing i would fear is getting in trouble for having duplicate content.

[globay]

Good question! I just know that you should not show one page at two adresses (duplicate content). I put a message telling that the site had changed. Are there any problems with google (same message at different sites!)

[Mohamed_E]

werty,

I am asking myself that very question! More specifically, is it worth it?

I have changed one filename as a test, using a 301 Redirect Permanent in my .htaccess file, and it works. It would not be too difficult to write a sed script that would change the URLs in all my files and add appropriate lines to my .htaccess.

Since I am thinking of other potential modifications of my file nameing I am doing nothing right now, other than using hyphens in new filenames.