site.com/name-of-article vs site.com/name_of_article

which is better in terms of SEO

[phph]

First off, my apologies if this is not the correct forum to ask this.

Simple question - which is better in terms of SEO:

1) site.com/name-of-article (dashes)
2) site.com/name_of_article (underlines)
3) none (explain please)

Thanks in advance to all SEO experts here!

[inbound]

No hard facts on this, just some thoughts:

Dashes are more common and will not be seen as 'unusual' by people scanning serps. My theory on this is that joe public is now slightly wary of a strange URL, so go with the more common style.

As for the search engines, I think they will see either as valid. I just know that we use dashes and do very well with them.

[phph]

Thanks a lot for the fast input!

[Hubbard]

Both the two examples are equally fine.

[jdMorgan]

GoogleGuy has made a specific recommendation on this very-well-covered subject [google.com]; Use hyphens in preference to underscores, because many search engines see the hyphen as a space, but see the underscore as joining the two words together.

In other words a site using "blue-widgets" will be found for a search string of "blue widgets" and also "blue" and "widgets", but a site using "blue_widgets" will only be found if the searcher types in "blue_widgets".

Another reason to avoid underscores is that they can be obscured by a link underline if the underscored text is linked_on_a_page [webmasterworld.com]. Compare: linked-on-a-page [webmasterworld.com]

Jim

[Hubbard]

Sorry, just rechecked the facts and no doubt using hyphen/dash is better than underscore.

Example (dont laugh)

Google: great_in_bed

You get a few pages and just some exact matches for any page that has the underscores.

Now Google great-in-bed

You get much better results, more pages and terms that match without the hyphens.