SEO Benefits of Hyphens Vs. Underscores

Can anyone shed any light on the use of Hyphens in a file name vs. Undercores??

This-Is-My-Keyword-Phrase.html vs. This_Is_My_Keyword_Phrase.html

I've noticed Blogger uses hyphens and I'm wondering if this is Google's preferred 'separator' or whether it even matters.

Thanks in advance!

 

Ok - let me be the first to apologize for asking a question that seems to pop up quite frequently (as indicated in the Similar Threads window at the bottom of the page). Hyphens seem to be the preference as Google doesn't recognize underscores as a word separator. Thank you to previous posters and thread creators.

 

Use hyphens.

 

Agree with above.

 

With this "This-Is-My-Keyword-Phrase.html" it show as seperate words to google. This phrase "This_Is_My_Keyword_Phrase.html" ends up looking like ThisIsMyKeywordPhrase.html.

This is simple explanation but you get it

 

You can read it here from google:

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=76329&query=underscores&topic=&type=

"Consider using punctuation in your URLs. The URL http://www.example.com/green-dress.html is much more useful to us than http://www.example.com/greendress.html. We recommend that you use hyphens (-) instead of underscores (_) in your URLs."

 

Thanks, hmm what if you use a combination.. i.e.

estelle_american-boy.html ??

Oh well, it's working alright for me so far

 

Here is the answer:

http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?p=8952335#post8952335

 

I think Matt Cutts' blog will help you,

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/dashes-vs-underscores/