Do search engines use URL for keywords?

[djtaverner]

Hello,

Do search engines use the URL for keyowrd analysis?

If so and I want online auction as the keywords in my URL how is it best to seperate the two words in the URL?

www.example.com/online_auction.htm

or

www.example.com/online+auction.htm

or

www.example.com/online auction.htm

etcetc

What is the best option?

cheers
Dave

[kevinpate]

none of the above 8^)
however, online-auction.htm would be an acceptable alternative.
It's more likely to be parsed as separate words than online_auction.htm.
From past experience, you want to avoid a break in the words, i.e. online[space]auction.htm

[Herath]

We used "_" for url keyword seperation. It's been recognized well by the search engines.

[pageoneresults]

I concur with kevinpate.

There are many topics here at the board discussing the use of underscores and hyphens. It has been proven that hyphens are the best option for separating words in URI strings. A little bit of research using Google will show you that G treats underscores differently than hyphens. That has also been the general consensus of past topics covering this issue.