Hello, I am new to the Forum and am not sure if there is already a thread for this question. When labeling my images and files should I use -'s or _'s? For example: mydomain.com/like-this.html or mydomain.com/or_like_this.html I have tried both in the past. I am wondering if one way holds more weight then the other. Any thoughts?
Yeah there is little difference between them. Although for a while there it seemed like the - were the way to go so that might be the only reason to favour it. Cheers
You can choose any, it depends upon your choice as from now onwards or may be sometime in near future Google will also see underscores as word separators as it was not considered traditionally and everbody enjoyed hyphens. See this: http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9748779-7.html
Hyphen and underscore are both acceptable by search engines and there's no weight difference in using any of these;but in terms of popularity, hyphen is mostly used as word separator...
That's not true according to Matt Cutts. Underscores are seen to be part of a word, this comes from Google's heritage of geekism. Many programmers, especially with legacy experience in C++ tend to prefix their private (member level) variable names with _ or m_. There's lots of code available on the web, and even if Google's stated aim is to organize all the world's information, program code has a special place in their hearts. Matt Cutts explains on his blog that underscores are not treated like dashes, which allows Google to perform searches for m_someVariableName and return what the user wants.
You obviously missed this then: http://blogs.cnet.com/8301-13530_1-9748779-28.html?tag=blg.orig (Remember, that was published in July 2007, it's now October 2007.)