Is a space the same os a dash in link text?

' ' = '-' (True or False)

[Jammer]

I am trying to determine if my inbound links are fully optimised.

I have a number of people linking to my site as "keyword-keyword" and most link as "keyword keyword".

My question is around the dash between the 2 keywords, does it mean the same in google as a space?

Should I ask all those linking to me with the dash to change it to a space?

Anyone got any clues on this?

Thanks in advance.
Jammer

[SEO practioner]

Hi Jammer and welcome to webmaster world

To Google, a space or a hyphen is the same thing, as far as keywords in links are concerned.

:-)

[takagi]

I'm quite sure the space and dash will be handled in a same way. The only exception I can think of, is a keyword with numbers. Like in cosmetics (4711) or a telephone number (03-1234-5678). Symbols like . , -? ; are normally ignored by Google. But the underscore is considered a letter, so that is a different story!

[Jammer]

thanks for the welcome seo practitioner ***notes joined date after mine :) ***

[excell]

The only way you are going to really know the answer to this question is to do some of your own research.

As an example I have keyword-keyword.com
and if I search for keyword-keyword there are only 74,000 results, but for keyword keyword there are 1,370,000

So, whereas the - is parsed as a space and not like an underscore (do a simple search for - & _ to see the difference) there is a difference between keyword keyword & keyword-keyword.

[takagi]

Hi excell, for the SERP it doesn't matter if your HTML file contains

keyword1-keyword2

or

keyword1 keyword2

It is only in the search string where it matters. The SERP for

keyword1-keyword2

is the same as

"keyword1 keyword2"

(i.e. keyword1 immediately followed by keyword2). A search for

keyword1 keyword2

will usually give more results because in the last case the SERP consists of all the pages that contain both words somewhere on the page.

[excell]

yup, I concur with that result :)

[Jammer]

Thanks for your input people,

I think I understand what you mean, however my own resarch on my kw-kw combo yeilds the following:

keyword1-keyword2 returns 487,000

"keyword1-keyword2" returns 749,000

keyword1 keyword2 returns 6,150,000

each of these return different SERPs for most of the same sites... It looks like the dash does make a difference!