Hyphenated URL’s

by Scott Allen

To Hyphenate Or Not To Hyphenate? That is the Question

I often get asked whether it’s better to use hyphenated or non-hyphenated URL’s, and whether underscores should be used. The answer is pretty simple: use a hyphen.

Why use hyphenated URL’s?
First it is more readable to readers (compare: youarefine vs you-are-fine).
Second search engine likes “word1-word2″ more than “word1word2″, although I believe it’s going to be of little significance (explanation below). Anyway you may wish to improve as much as possible, so you may wish to consider it.

Google (and MSN, Yahoo) favor the following naming systems:

• Plus (+): http://www.domain.com/word1+word2.htm
• Hyphen (-): http://www.domain.com/word1-word2.htm

Google (and MSN, Yahoo) don’t favor the following naming systems:

• No separator: http://www.domain.com/word1word2.htm
• Underscore “_”: http://www.domain.com/word1_word2.htm

Keyword Separators
Search engines give a little extra weight to keywords found in domain names and URLs. Because URLs and domains do not allow spaces, one must use either underscores or hyphens as word separators (or not use any separators at all).

Why not underscores?
Google does not treat underscores as word separators.* That’s why Google won’t consider keyword1_keyword2 as matches to keyword1 and keyword2. Obviously, it is better to use hyphens in your URLs and domains.

What to do if I have used underscores already?
If you have already used underscores, don’t change your page names to hyphens. The weight given to matches in URLs and domains is not significant enough to be worth the time of waiting that search engines need to recrawl and reindex the changed URLs. You should consider using hyphens for the sites and pages that you are going to make in the future.

Another Benefit of Using Hyphens
There’s another benefit of using hyphens in the domain names. Many directories link to sites using their domain names as the anchor text. In this case, hyphens will help a lot, because Google will treat them as anchor text matches.

Problems of Using Hyphens in Domain Names
People may forget the hyphen and type “word1word2.com” as it is the traditional way of typing 2 words. Also it may be a bit harder for someone to spell out the whole URL over phone. Finally the hyphened URL isn’t worth as much as non-hyphened URL if you resell your domain name.

Further Reading:

• Matt Cutts on Dashes vs. Underscores

* UPDATE 08/17/07: There has been some inaccurate information spread recently that Google now treats underscores as word separators. Matt Cutts informs everyone that this is not in effect yet, and to stick with hyphens (aka dashes) for now.)

Tags:
seo | webgeek

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