Rank: Member
Joined: 9/24/2003(UTC)
Posts: 402
|
I was reading one book the other evening that indicated - should be used to seperate words rather than _. Is there any conclusive user experience that indicates one is better than the other for custom urls? IE Hard Drives www.mysite.com/harddrives.aspx or www.mysite.com/hard_drives.aspx or www.mysite.com/hard-drives.aspx
|
|
|
|
|
|
Rank: Member
Joined: 11/5/2003(UTC)
Posts: 1,786
|
"-" are better for Google for sure. There is a good reason. Google was started by programmers and it is common to name variables "_something" so when Google encounters hard_drive it searches for the exact words and "hard" & "_drive". If you use hard-drive Google will search for "hard drive" and "hard" & "drive"
|
|
|
|
|
|
Rank: Member
Joined: 9/24/2003(UTC)
Posts: 402
|
Marcus this is what I'm running with as well. One other cosmetic limitation of _ is in providing links. Some still receive links underlined, and the _ can trip up those trying to enter directly.
Any other input is appreciated!
|
|
|
|
|
|
Rank: Member
Joined: 9/24/2003(UTC)
Posts: 402
|
Absolutely everything I read last night confirmed what you said Marcus, use -
In our example above google and others treat the - as a seperator and would find the term hard drive in hard-drive.aspx
However, it would find neither hard nor drive in hard_drive but instead the literal term hard_drive as it concludes the _ is a character. Recent tests have been run that verify this.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Rank: Member
Joined: 11/5/2003(UTC)
Posts: 1,786
|
Thanks for running some tests on that. Maybe I was misinformed or maybe they've changed their algorithms.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Rank: Member
Joined: 11/5/2003(UTC)
Posts: 2,136
Was thanked: 1 time(s) in 1 post(s)
|
Here's Matt Cutts reply, http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/dashes-vs-underscores/Keep in mind that the terms that you type in the search box and the text of your site are parsed by different parsers. The two parsers may (probably do) treat dashes and underscores differently. I suspect the indexer (the parser that 'reads' your site) treats underscores the way Marcus described, while the search box parser treats underscores the way Matt and Scott describe. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Rank: Member
Joined: 11/6/2003(UTC)
Posts: 1,903
|
You can use each for different reasons. I won't go into specifics but they each have good uses.
AAGR - stick with dashes. |
Noah |
|
|
|
|
|
Forum Jump
You cannot post new topics in this forum.
You cannot reply to topics in this forum.
You cannot delete your posts in this forum.
You cannot edit your posts in this forum.
You cannot create polls in this forum.
You cannot vote in polls in this forum.