Dashes are better than Underscores ...

... between keywords in file names.

[skyhawk133]

In a guest post by Vanessa Fox on Matt Cutt's blog, Vanessa points out dashes are much better than underscores. Matt later bolds this line in the blog entry for emphasis.

I had not thought about this, but apparently blue_widgets.html is considered 1 word, where as blue-widgets.html is considered 2 words. So for multi-word titles used as static HTML names, it looks like using a hyphen is far better than using an underscore. A brief look at the SERPS does confirm this.

[ZoltanTheBold]

In my view, the bolding on the SERPs page is a character matching routine, added as a final layer at page creation time to help users see their keywords in the results. But the fact that a character string is bold is not tied to the scoring algorithm itself.

Can't this process then be done on the way in, not just the way out? If they can character match for display purposes why can't they do so for ranking and scoring?

In other words if there's evidence that they can discern the use of underscores in text, why wouldn't they attempt to fold this into their ranking to reflect the way actual humans use it (i.e. interchangeable with other punctuation like dashes)?

[Brett_Tabke]

Remember, dashes can be in domain names - underscores can not. Think about it.

[Asia_Expat]

Interesting to read this.
Only yesterday, I created some new content for my site and used underscores in the directory names and filenames. In view of what I read here, I hurriedly changed them to dashes, hopefully before they have been indexed.
However, after reveiwing SERPS for various keywords and all of my competitors, I see no evidence that it makes a squat of difference. I have made the change for safety more than anything.

[WW_Watcher]

Ok, I changed the filenames(following G1smd's advice on the dotted naming convention) on the smaller of my two sites(a very new site with very little traffic), and put in 301 redirects for the pages that had been indexed by the big 3 search engines(about 50 entries in .htaccess).

I am debating on changing some of the filenames on my other site, but that would involve about 300 or so web pages that might do better if I rename them, replacing the underscores with periods. I do pretty well in my niche, and hate to risk loosing our current rankings.

So my first question is, how many 301 redirects in .htaccess is too many. All I have in it currently is the lines for the non-www to www redirects. This site(sells widgets for my brick & mortor store) gets about 5,000 uniques a day. (about 1600 referrals from G A day, 230 from Y & about 100 from MSN, most of the rest are from people coming in directly). How much additional load, or bandwidth would be used by approx 300 additional lines of 301 redirects.

Second question, is it even wise to rename pages that top the serps for the targeted keywords for those pages, or should I proceed in the future with the dotted naming convention as I create new pages with new products? I have always been a fan of the saying, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"

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WW_Watcher

[mattg3]

I use regex stuff like this. No need for many lines.

RewriteEngine On

RedirectMatch permanent /useless.old.directory.still.in.searchengine(.*)$ http://www.example.com/

RedirectMatch permanent
/movedtoanotherpath/(.*)$ http://www.example.com/newpath/$1

I also use a webserver to do the example.com and www.example.com redirect and all it does is.

RewriteEngine On
RedirectMatch permanent ^(.*)$ www.example.com$1

I have none of what people here call, I think, canonical issues.

[WW_Watcher]

Hey MattG3, I would not want to redirect to the root(provided I understand those redirects), I like that searchers find what they are looking for, and they do not have to go looking for the page that they had bookmarked, or selected in the serps. The pages exist in possibly 80 to 100 different subdirectories. I sell custom widget parts, and have that many different types & styles of each of the parts. I would only be renaming pages, not changing their location.

I have about convinced myself to leave well enough alone, and just create all new pages with the dotted naming convention as I move forward.

Thanks!
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WW_Watcher

[jdMorgan]

An OT technical note:

RedirectMatch is an Apache mod_alias directive. As such, there is no need to use mod_rewrite's RewriteEngine on directive with it.

And if you do use mod_rewrite directives, then a single RewriteEngine on at the top of the file will suffice.

Back on-topic, the use of keyword-in-URL is a small factor in ranking a site for those keywords. If your pages are already on top, and if you already have many on-topic links with those keywords in the link-text, don't bother to change existing pages.

Jim

[Asia_Expat]

So, is there any advantage to dots as opposed to dashes? <headache />

[Asia_Expat]

... apart from aesthetics.

[sniffer]

Its worth noting that 'My-product' is misuse of the dash in everday language and doesnt read well IMO because you have to actively decide to ignore the original purpose of the dash when reading the page names. I suppose thats a vote for 'My.product' -

I wonder if the dot technique any noticeable affect on ranking