Do you hyphenate file & folder names?

Do hyphenated names result in better targeting?

[farmboy]

Do you hyphenate file and folder names? Have you noticed if it results in better AdSense targeting?

For example, would you expect the file red-clown-shoes.htm to have better targeting than redclownshoes.htm?



FarmBoy

[netmeg]

I do hyphenate, but I never noticed if made a difference for targeting. I do it more for readability.

[HuskyPup]

^^^What netmeg wrote^^^

I've always done it that way and generally my ads are bang on target except when they take their brains out when Groupon or Vodafone decide to flood the market with ads and seemingly impossible to escape from on any site!

[netmeg]

Yea, when Groupon and Living Social were targeting my site, they pushed everything out till I blocked 'em. Got tired of the giant glazed donut. I don't think a hyphen would have made a difference there.

It's just plain easier for humans to read detroit-michigan than to read detroitmichigan - and it wouldn't surprise me if it worked better for Google too, since in most other cases, they treat a hyphen like a space. But again, it's not something I ever tested with a thought towards AdSense targeting.

[JCKline]

I hyphenate for the user, google sees it the same way with or without.

[nomis5]

I hyphenate so I can understand it for myself!

My partner sometimes adds pages to my sites and she never hyphenates.

Never noticed any difference between the two as far as Google is concerned.

[icedowl]

I don't hyphenate and don't have any plans to. For me, it goes back to the days of old when file names could never be longer than 6 characters and old habits are hard to break. I just make them make sense.

[IanCP]

I hyphenated directories and file names years before AdSense was even thought of.

I did it solely to make files etc make logical sense to me. No other reason.

Does this result in better AdSense targeting? I don't know and I very much doubt anyone outside of AdSense could give us a definitive answer.