Are underscores bad for google?

given lower priority?

[matthew]

this may be a silly question but dows google "favor" the url:

www.abc.com/xyzman.html

over

www.abc.com/x_y_z_man.html

any ideas?

[ciml]

As I understand it:

* www.abc.com/xyzman.html will match "xyzman"

* www.abc.com/x_y_z_man.html will match "x_y_z_man"

* www.abc.com/x-y-z-man.html will match "x y z man"
(and x-y-z-man but that's not normally the point).

This won't make much difference in itslef (unless you don't have the phrase in the page and there's no competition for the phrase), but if people link to the page using the URL then you can benefit from having the right combination.

Notice also that the latter matches "y z man", but the former two don't match "yzman" and "y_z_man" respectively.

[miles]

I use them reguardless and have seen great results with google and other engines.

They are not bad.

[Yidaki]

zilch, nothing, no difference! Half of my pages use "-" other half "_" -> makes no difference in ranking! I stopped bothering about this.

[Crazy_Fool]

i have some pages using the underscore and they seem to be treated the same as a space. i've also seen a lot of sites and pages on the net using underscores, all highly ranked. note that google directory uses underscores in the path.

[Yidaki]

Crazy_Fool,

>note that google directory uses underscores in the path.

... also DMOZ/ODP - the reason for me to stop rewriting all my page names ...

;)

[rfgdxm1]

AFAICT, Google treats hyphens and underscores identically.

[coconutz]

After reading the following discussion and trying what WebGuerrilla suggests, I'd go with hyphens as it seems they are treated differently:

Hyphen or Underscore? [webmasterworld.com]

[ciml]

blue_widget is not found if you search for blue widget.

blue_widget etc. [google.com] (underscore)
blue widget etc. [google.com] (space)

[rfgdxm1]

Unless someone can confirm that underscores are treated the same as hyphens, I'd say don't use underscores. Also, as was pointed out in that thread coconutz liked to, hyphens are more "natural" to humans than underscores. Thus, use hyphens.

[rmjvol]

me too.. err, I mean, I've seen the same results that my use of hyphens and underscores seem to be treated the same. But I almost always use hyphens as they are easier to read when links get underlined.

rmjvol

[Mohamed_E]

In the thread that coconutz referred to GoogleGuy writes:

> I would go with hyphens, personally.

Just took advantage of the dance to do some checking. I renamed a file changing the underscores to hyphens, the old URL is in www, the new in www3. Doing an allinurl:kw1 kw2 I did not find my URL of www (underscores) but found it on www3 (hyphens).

Of course, this says nothing about the more mportant question: how useful are keywords in the URL?

[rfgdxm1]

>Of course, this says nothing about the more mportant question: how useful are keywords in the URL?

With Google, I'd say a lot. Having seens tons of Google SERPs, this definitely indicates to me that having the keyword in the URL give that a boost. Thus, if I were selling blue widgets on a page at widget.com, I'd name it widget.com/blue-widgets.

[Crazy_Fool]

oh well, i guess i better change those underscores ... thanks for the tips people :)