SEO, To Hyphen or Underscore URLs Revisited

5 March 2010 by brant, Comments

I’ve seen a lot of SEO Experts and many SEO tools recommend that you should be using hyphens in URLs rather than underscores, one example was Ann Smarty over at SearchEngineJournal. For the disadvantages of the underscore in URLs she says:

Traditionally it isn’t seen by search engines as a word separator (this is slowly changing now)

Slowly changing? It was reported in 2007 that Google and other search engines treat underscores like hyphens. To say it’s slowly changing is like saying Facebook is finally catching on. Three years on the web is an eternity. She also says that there are no disadvantages to hyphens. Though I’m not so sure about that. . .

Think about multiple ways that hyphens are used. Hyphens are added in-between words and in people’s names. For example, Maurice Jones-Drew of the Jaugars has a name with a hyphen. Let me give you an example of a potential sentence that includes his name:

website.com/Maurice-Jones-Drew-has-all-star-week

Now if we use underscores it would look like this:

website.com/Maurice_Jones-Drew_has_all-star_week

Slightly different meaning in both of those URLs, wouldn’t you agree? It is also much easier to read with underscores. Therefore the BEST option is underscores because people rarely use them when it comes to typing names or phrases. There is no way they will get in the way.

I know what your saying, I’m preaching to use underscores when this blog uses hyphens. Wordpress uses them by default (though I’m not sure why and I never changed it) Though I have used underscores on other projects…. Check out Jones-Drew’s page at FantasySP.com.

I don’t mean to single out Ann because she certainly knows her SEO, but this issue just keeps popping up every now and then and it truly annoys me. It needs to be squashed once in for all.

UPDATE: In the comments below, Kieron Hughes provides a link to Matt Cutts suggesting to use hyphens. I guess I stand corrected.

Do you guys agree with me or am I being too nit picky?

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Tags: SEO

SEO

I've always used hyphens, and see no real reason to change, but it's always interesting to see all viewpoints.

Ann Smarty

Only one thing to clarify. Please read carefully what I've said in the post "Slowly changing" referred to search engines in general, not Google in particular. Do you have any evidence that ALL search engines treat underscore and hyphen the same way? - Exactly, so "slowly" was the way to emphasize that hyphens are the safer way to go because they are *traditionally* treated as the word separator.

mark rushworth

its a case of using underscores means re-educating the general public to use this in place of hyphens, its just not going to happen.

Kieron Hughes

Personally I disagree.

If you have a link that has underscores in, then they can often by misinterpreted in certain instances.

For example. If my website contained underscores and I posted it on a forum, then that link would most likely be underlined due to default CSS styling. Now when somebody looks at that link, they won't be able to tell it has underscores because they blend in with the underlined styling of the link.

If (for whatever reason) somebody decides to type the URL into the address bar (as opposed to clicking on the link/copying and pasting) then they may well just ignore the underscores as they can't see them - meaning the link won't work.

In terms of clarity I think it's much better to use hyphens.

Brant Tedeschi

I see what your saying. Though I don't think that will be an issue.

A lot of forums and some blog comments tend to shorten a URL so it fits on one line anyway. So it would look like this:

http://www.fantasysp.com/playe...7342

Whether you are using hyphens or underscores, it's not going to matter.

Kieron Hughes

Regardless of how URLs look, hyphens are much better for SEO - as explained by Matt Cutts at Google:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3SFVfDIS5k