Smart Traffic SEO Tip #82 – Which is better for URL Path – Dashes or Underscores?
This question has appeared a lot in forums recently, with users wondering which one is better to use as a URL separator. Well, if you take time reading this forum, it mentions that both dash and underscore punctuation marks are equally applicable as spacing words in a filename, while spaces should be avoided due to their incompatibility with the Web.
So how does Google understand each of these separators? According to Matt Cutts Blog, using a Dash (-) for your URL is highly preferable. His example clearly shows that if you have a URL text1_text2, Google will only display your page in search results if the users search for text1_text2 which is highly unlikely.. But if your URL is structured like this, text1-text2, your page can be displayed for search queries text1, text2, and even for “text1 text2″. While the said article from Mr. Cutts is quite old, it still shares a good point. Note that a hyphen is easier to remember, read, and to type rather than an underscore. All in all, it’s more user-friendly.
So if you want your web pages to be visible in Google Search Results and increase user recall for your URL, then consider using Dashes (-) for spacing words within your site.
