Underscores_and dashes - What's best to use?

[merlin78]

Hi,

I would like to know what is best to use when naming doorway pages or images. Would I be best to name an image as clothes_dryer.jpg or clothes-dryer.jpg? What will help more in the rankings an underscore or a dash? I have noticed in Northern Light for example there are alot of pages that have obtained high rankings in their database that have a url containing a dash such as [whateverdomain.com...] (example only).

Could anyone help me with this issue?

Thanks in advance!

[rcjordan]

I have sites with both. I always used dashes/hyphens, but a few months ago I acquired a site that used underbars in the urls. I now think underbars do better.

Welcome to WmW, merlin.

[Air]

From some testing I did a while ago, It seems AV and Ink tend to "see" each word when separated by an underscore, whereas with dashes they most often only pick up the first or last word of the-hyphen-separated-keywords. Which do I use? still a combination of both, I don't like the way underscores make a URL look when it is a hyperlink.

[Marcia]

Air, would it be so that if a hyphen were used in a two word domain name, one would be picked up but not both? And is it better to hyphenate a domain name with a keyword used?

[merlin78]

Thanks for your replies rcjordan and air. Your comments on this issue are very informative. It will be interesting to know if anyone else has done any study on which is more beneficial. From what I can gather so far is that most people use both but aren't specifically sure which one helps the most (if at all?).

Regards :)

[Brett_Tabke]

The dash is dead in filenames and paths - still alive in domain names. Underscore mildly alive in filenames but not paths.