Underscores versus Hyphens

[castar]

I know that the topic of whether to use underscores in titles versus hyphens has been debated before, but my question is specifically this: Has anyone switched their pages with underscores to hyphens and had better position in the serps (especially google)? I have many older pages and wondering if it is worth the effort to change hundreds of pages over to hyphens. Thanks.

[Rajith]

In Title Space is allowed and it is one of the better option than underscores & Hypens. Why hypens and Underscores in title.

[castar]

Thanks for replying :) A couple of years ago, someone suggested for seo purposes that we separate words with underscores, so that's what we did.

for example: www.widgets.com/blue_widgets

I've been reading lately that it's better to have hypens or dashes rather than underscores. Are you saying that it is better to have neither?

I'm very interested in hearing from anyone who has actually changed their pages and how their search engine rankings were effected.

[WebEqualizer]

:)

[izahmad]

Well it depends on what keywords you are optimizing your website. If the keyword is blue widgets then use blue_widget and if you want to target two different keywords then use blue-widgets. Make sure that hyphens means you are separating the words and underscores means one word.

[izahmad]

As far as the results are concerned, well yes they do change. I can confirnm on MSN but am not sure for google. Maybe someone else can talk more about google.

[castar]

Thanks for the feedback. I'll get to work on those pages.

[harbs]

A google search in my niche for blue widget usage has the keywords in the url highlighted as such : h*tp://example.com/blue_widget_usage.html

It seems Google is treating the keywords in the url separated by underscores as separate words.