How does Google see the - character

Is it a blank?

[theleveller]

Hi,

I have a keyword that has several way of being interpreted. The term is the everyday term "t-shirts" or "t-shirt" looking at google and other engines is the - character looked upon as a space?

Using - and _ to name pages i.e. red_widgets.htm is obvious but does anyone have an idea of how google handles the keyword as found in the content.

Take a look at the some keyword suggestion tools no sign of a -..

Cheers

[jonrichd]

From my understanding, the - character is looked at as a space by Google. There for T-shirts and T shirts have no different meaning.

[Marketing Guy]

Both hyphen and underscore are considered as spaces, but underscores can also be considered as a character - see Matt Cutt's post on the subject: [mattcutts.com...]

MG

[texasville]

>>>>Yah, I'd stick to hyphens, periods, or commas. Most people seem to prefer hyphens. If you use an underscore '_' character, then Google will combine the two words on either side into one word. So bla.com/kw1_kw2.html wouldn't show up by itself for kw1 or kw2. You'd have to search for kw1_kw2 as a query term to bring up that page.<<<<<<

Quote from GG in the ww forums. couldn't find the thread here but got it from another article. remembered reading it. used it for my pages on a rebuild.

[stargeek]

I've used both with success.
I personally think underscores are good for avoiding an Over Optimization Penalty.
And google highlights the keywords in the URL for kw1_kw2 as well as kw1-kw2 on a search for kw1 kw2.

[abates]

Odd that Google treats kw1_kw2 as one word. How many words are there in the Oxford English Dictionary which have an underscore in the middle of them?