Hyphenated-filenames vs. runtogetherwords in filename

[MrStitch]

I've got a page that's been running for quite a while. The name for that page is in fact the keywords I'm targeting the site for.... and not doing a very good job either.

A while ago, there was a lot of talk about hyphens and underscores, and how they could affect your serps.

However, in my case, I'm not using either one. The two keyword term is put together - www.mysite.com/bluewidgets.htm

Even though the page has been online for quite a long time, would I benefit in the SERPs by 301'ing the file to blue-widgets.htm? Or would this hurt me, since you know... the page has already been online for a while.

[Robert Charlton]

MrStitch - I'd say that the very slight benefit, if any, you might gain from hyphenating the filename, is far outweighed by the risks and complications of 301s.

[icedowl]

Mine have always been "runtogetherwords" and I see quite a bit of traffic from folks who search using "runtogetherwords" as well. I wouldn't even dream of changing them because the same pages can be found even if the words aren't allruntogether. In fact, the serps competition is far less when they search using "runtogetherwords".

Why folks search in that fashion is beyond me, but I do benefit from it.

[wilderness]

my domain names are hyphenated.
Although it created some problems initially, today it's quite unique and makes hyphenated-widgets easy to find.

[steveb]

Runthewordstogether is useless.

Building your website right is never something to not do. If we are only talking about one page, by all means 301 from example.com/twowords.html to example.com/two-words/ The only reason not to do it would because the page will be obsolete this month, or is about some event this month.

[potentialgeek]

Blog software loves hyphenation. I hate it. I like one-word file names. They look much cleaner and uncontrived.

"Dashes vs. underscores" by Matt Cutts
[mattcutts.com...]

"Google doesn’t algorithmically penalize for dashes in the url."

p/g

[MrStitch]

According to the majority, it looks like I shouldn't change it. The reason I asked tho, is this post at the Webmaster Central blog - [googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com...]

One line reads - "Even without punctuation, there's a good chance we'll be able to figure out that bigleopard.html is about a "big leopard" and not a "bigle opard.""

A good chance? Is it possible that the odds just weren't in my favor?

I'll let it sit for now, only because I've made several other changes - submitted a fresh site map, cleaned up some files that are no longer being used, etc.