Which of these 2 URL formats are more important to Google Search Engine?

Can you please help me explain which of the 2 URL formats are more important to Google SERPS?

www.sample.com/this+is+the+topic+of+my+page.html

or

www.sample.com/this_is_the_topic_of_my_page.html

Can google distinguish the words in the URL for both cases? Advantages and disadvantages?

Thanks for your time

 

for me, using the underscore has always been better.

I don't know why, it just has

 

Google doesnt recognise the underscore as a seperator.

However, why are you even bothering with this?

Content on the page is the main point - and links to it. The page name you suggest means (I assume) you will have this in the page title and H1 tag.

Keywords in the page name wont really be needed if the content is good and the page is semantically correct.

You can call your page anything.

 

I'm not sure why but at some point I switched from using underscores to using dashes and that's what I'm still using for all of my sites. I wish I could explain why though...

 

Someone explained it to me like this:

Go to google and run a search on '_' (just an underscore) - you'll get something like 710,000,000 results returned (i.e. it exists)

Do the same for a hyphen '-' and you'll get exactly zero results returned i.e. it doesn't exist

If you're trying to optimise a page title/domain whatever, then it's far best to use something that doesn't exist as a separator because Google will then interpret the title as separate words:

a-random-page-title therefore becomes: a random page title

whereas a_random_page_title stays exactly that, and so isn't really optimized for anything other than people searching for a_random_page_title (which is unlikely)

'+' works pretty much the same as '-', but I personally think '-' reads better

Oh, and what someone said about content was important too

 

Ha! Got it! It's because Matt Cutts told me to use dashes!
Read all about it here: Dashes vs. underscores

And as you can see, he's using dashes as well...

 

http://www.jimwestergren.com/seo-test-finalized-how-to-write-the-urls/

An interesting SEO test done by Jim to find the right url structure. He suggests to use '-' rather than '+' or '_' in urls.

 

You may find these an interesting read Keywords in Urls and URLs (Update).

Hope they help.

- Michael

 

This was my belief I think 6 months ago. Then I tried placing the title of the page in my URL. And it made a big difference. I never hit the first page of Google SERPS before but after doing this, I sometimes made it to number 1.

I don't argue that the content is the main point. But if it helps google to know what my pages are really all about through the URL, I think it will be worth doing it. And it is automatic with my website (i.e. it automatically appends the page title to the URL). I only want to know what must be the correct separator.

And yes, I forgot about the dash

 

To all those who responded, thanks very much. I actually forgot about the dash. Thanks also for the links to other articles. I am going to read it now.

 

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/guest-post-vanessa-fox-on-organic-site-review-session/

A good post about all this.....

 

Anyway, I remember now why we are using "+" and not "-". Because URL encoding in PHP automatically converts spaces to "+"

I have a follow up question related to changing URLs but it might be already off-topic so I guess I'll create another thread for it.

Thanks again everyone for your response. Very helpful

 

Wow, really nice info here. I never though about url structure. Domi, thanks for the link to matt cutts side. Nice read.

 

"-" worked best for me and every related SEO article I have ever read recommends "-".

You can use this for filenames and descriptive /subfolders/ for best results.

For example http://www.TTTTTT.com/CreditCards/Why-is-my-Visa-red.html