A word such as I-Like-Butter to a SE is "I Like Butter" A word such as I_Like_Butter to a SE is "ILikeButter" So in most cases, you should use - rather than _ for keyword separators.
CReed and Claudek, thanks for your posts. Much appreciated. SasaVtec, grow up. If you want to contribute to the thread, cut the childish phpld-obsessed remarks. If you have some valuable info that can shed light on the topic for me and other members, feel free to post. Otherwise, take a hike. And for the record, I never slagged phpld. There are many good directory scripts out there, phpld being one of them. But don't make it impossible to have healthy, open and honest discussions about them. Vito
Wow, I didn't know that. Thanks very much for the info. I will be sure to post in the phplynx forum to ask if they can make that change to the script. Dang it. Now that I think about it, I can't tell you how many times I've used underscore rather than hyphen in all of my sites. Crap. That means I should change them all?? In your opinion, is it worth going through all my sites and changing underscores to hyphens? Will the change in SERP be worth it? As well, I don't disbelieve what you are saying, but if I want to research this a bit more, can you recommend any links to info about it? See, this is the type of feedback I was hoping for in this thread (as opposed to unfounded attacks on my personal integrity). Vito
Try a read here: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/dashes-vs-underscores/ And here And speaking of putting a dash in URLs, hyphens are often better than underscores [Ed. Note: bolded by Matt ]. african-elephants.html is seen as two words: “African†and “elephantsâ€. african_elephants is seen as one word: african_elephant. It’s doubtful many people will be searching for that.
Actually CreeD's information is correct. I just checked and verified that the underscore does end up being like the example CreeD used, ie african_elephants. Apologies for the (mis)information given earlier.
Cool. Thanks, CReed. Very interesting. With regards to all the sites I have in my network wherein I use underscores, do you think I would be wise to change them all to hyphens? An immediate concern I have from the get go is that many of my sites are already well indexed (including all the sub pages). So if I change the page file names to hyphens, will I not lose a whole bunch of SE traffic for a while given that they currently have all my underscore pages in their db? When someone clicks a Google link to one of my sub pages, they will hit a 404 (until G catches up and replaces them all with the hyphen pages). Is there a "smart" or "clever" way to make the transition less detrimental to my traffic? Vito
You should be able to modify your .htaccess file to redirect all underscore queries to the updated hyphen without losing SERPs My knowledge isn't that good here, but others may be able to tell you straight out how to do this.
Vito vito vito heheheheh,.... good god WWW is rotten to the core. maybe you should test a bit more before starting a big thread vito... regarless good luck to you thx malcolm
Thanks as always for your sparklingly enlightening post, Malcolm. It was never my intention to start a "big" thread. I simply wanted to share my experiences with fellow DP members. Perhaps you should take up a hobby to use up the glaringly apparent amount of free time you have on your hands... Vito
That would be fantastic if I could use htaccess to minimize the transition. I will now email one of my buddies who knows all about htaccess and ask him to offer a plan of attack for this. Vito
The proper way to do it would be using 301 redirects so that you won't lose the links pointing at the pages using underscores. If you have a big network of sites I am not sure that it is worth the hassle. Maybe it would be better to do it gradually starting from your less important sites and testing the results to see if it is worth implementing it at all your sites. Generally Google is good at picking up 301 but it's always better to test before you implement any big changes. Edit to add: Any script can be SEF since in my opinion the most important thing is the template used (proper placement of information, h tags etc). In my opinion the most SEF script out of the box is Esyndicat
Thanks, dkessaris. Hopefully, if htaccess proves to solve the problem, then I won't have to worry about creating manual redirects (which is what I assume you are refering to). Vito
Sound advice. You don't want to jeopardize any rankings you currently enjoy on your larger, well established sites. I have a few sites using underscores that have many pages that rank well. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Just keep all of this in mind for your future projects.
Oh, sorry. I'm showing my ignorance about it. I didn't realize it was the same thing. :blush: dkessaris' advice is well taken regarding starting with the small sites in my network and moving up. Not sure I want to meddle with my main sites just yet. For instance, if you google for oscommerce tutorials, cubecart tutorials or zencart tutorials, my demodemo site ranks well. Do I meddle with that? (Oh dang - the nay sayers in this thread will now pounce on me for self-promoting my demodemo site. Ya got me, BUSTED. After all, given that my target market for that site is web hosts, yah, this is an obvious attempt to give the site more targeted traffic. ) Vito
I don't see a reason, after all you are using URLs like tutorials_osc.html, comparing that with tutorials-osc I don't believe that it would make a difference, at least not a big one. Especially since you are not using the entire words, but even if you did it wouldn't be worth to make the change since you already have the #1 position at Google. If you ever lose your rankings then yes it may be worth a try, but not now.
While there seems to be better to use - SE don't see I_Like_Butter as "ILikeButter" ..... but I like butter as well at least I get searches with phrases and I use _ on some websites ....