Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
www.example.com/folder/file_name.htm
and if you search for:
allinurl: file site:example.com
or
allinurl: name site:example.com
you get 0 results. Whereas if you search for:
allinurl: file_name site:example.com
the page shows up in the results fine.
I thought underscores were the same as hyphens these days?
Mike
Underscores and hyphens have never been treated the same - if you want a guaranteed word separator in a URL, always use a hyphen.
Hyphen is a word separator, and always has been.
Thus it's conventional to use hyphens to separate keywords in all urls and file names.
FWIW I have thousands of urls and images all ranking extremely well using underscores and trying to get out of typing underscores after all these years is very difficult!
allinur[b]l: f[/b]ileThe error here is the space after the colon. There should be no space.
[mattcutts.com...]
If you read Stephan Spencer’s write-up, he says some people thought that underscores are the same as dashes to Google now, and I didn’t quite say that in the talk. I said that we had someone looking at that now. So I wouldn’t consider it a completely done deal at this point. But note that I also said if you’d already made your site with underscores, it probably wasn’t worth trying to migrate all your urls over to dashes. If you’re starting fresh, I’d still pick dashes.
i know some seo's are telling their clients that google publicly announced that they are officially treating them the same;
I just wanted to highlight that i haven't seen google announce anything stating that they officially treat underscores as separators.
Ya but their documentation has been revised to include suggestions about not using underscores in URIs. They also state that you don't need to go back and change them but if you are planning a URI structure change, to nix the underscores.
One bad thing about underscores that I've picked up from Social Media and URI shortening services is that they appear to "always" trigger the URI shortener. I've managed to work a formula to where I can keep branded URIs from being shortened. Those underscored URIs don't work from a variety of perspectives.
Of course there will be many who are going to smack me for saying that. Hey, the truth hurts, I can take it. ;)
I've managed to work a formula to where I can keep branded URIs from being shortened.
if the branded url is longer than the shortened version, you may want to consider using the shortened version to facilitate retweets. the easier it is for somebody to retweet your link with your @username without chopping up the preceding words the better chance you'll have it retweeted without mistakes.
of course if the underscore is triggering the shortening app on a branded url, with the same or less characters than the shortened version, of course employ your e=mc2 evolution without hesitation ;)
Pros
Still thinking...
Cons
1. Underscores obscured in hyperlinks. IE and others tend to blend those underscores right in with the text-decoration: underline. Is that a space?
2. Underscores are an unnatural keystroke for many.
I'll leave Cons 3, 4, 5, 6... for others. :)
[edited by: pageoneresults at 4:40 pm (utc) on Mar. 23, 2009]
(I've never used underscores in URLs)
2. Underscores are an unnatural keystroke for many.
unless you took typing class in high school and could type blind folded doing bench presses; my pinky could hit an underscore harder than a sledge hammer;
back to it:
3. you have to hold down the shift key to type an underscore; if you accidentally hit the ctrl key, you'll need military-issued binoculars to read the monitor.
4.
Lots of computer programming languages have stuff like _MAXINT, which may be different than MAXINT. So if you have a url like word1_word2, Google will only return that page if the user searches for word1_word2 (which almost never happens).
[mattcutts.com...]
Check this[google.com...]
and [google.com...]
interesting to note, however, after reviewing those serps, that wikipedia uses underscores to separate the keywords describing their entries; and you know much they tank on the serps ;) doesn't take from the fact that the symbols are treated differently.
Coming back to the topic, consider this
[google.com...]
it did not tigger any URL that has _Bowery, only with the "-" (dashes) are coming in the list.
allinurl: fileThe error here is the space after the colon. There should be no space.
Google put the space there.
Anyway, it still doesn't show if you take the space out.
Like many, I was sure I'd heard Matt Cutts say something along the lines of "we treat underscores the same as hyphens in URls". A URl re-write is going to be a pain! But looks like this problem may be a permanent one so I'll probably stick to hyphens from here on in.
If you read Stephan Spencer’s write-up, [he says] some people thought that underscores are the same as dashes to Google now, and I didn’t quite say that in the talk. I said that we had someone looking at that now. So I wouldn’t consider it a completely done deal at this point. But note that I also said if you’d already made your site with underscores, it probably wasn’t worth trying to migrate all your urls over to dashes. If you’re starting fresh, I’d still pick dashes.[mattcutts.com...]
Underscores are for geeks; my grandma does not even know how to insert one.
Thanks tedster for clarifying.
