URLs with spaces - bad idea?

Is having URLs like:
domain.com/topic/name of topic

Going to hurt my SEO?

Or would I better off going through the extra effort to get them as:

domain.com/topic/name_of_topic

Best regards,
Tyler

 

spaces often mess up.
latest firefox version do no more urlencode in the address bar, so when someone copies/pastes a link to a chat or forum, it will get broken

 

I prefer dashes, but don't use empty spaces. They will be replaced by %

 

Actually you should consider that by placing your pages 2 levels down (index/folder/page) from home you are telling the SEs the pages are of little importance.

Eliminate the folder and try to link to as many pages as possible from your home page.

 

I'd suggest not using spaces, they mess things up these days.

 

Why are three of you talking about spaces when the OP never asked about using spaces???

 

Because that is the the title of this thread:

And the example URL he provided:

 

My eCommerce website is currently using dashes & underscores... Is this not correct?

Example: cashflow420.com/storeitem-64/Skip_Dog_1st_The_Money_Then_The_Power.html

 

You're underscores or dashes are fine but I am not sure the over extended naming of your pages is a good thing and again pushing pages down two levels can have varying effect.

Thanks I missed the first example having space...

 

space will be replaced with %20, try to use dash or underscore. Im sure dash is better because Google search doesnt detect dash in searching terms

 

i would recommend to use dashes instead of spaces...

 

Don't use spaces, use hyphens or underscores.

 

you can read about dashes vs underscores
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/dashes-vs-underscores/

 

I'm starting to see how the %20 can get very ugly very quickly. I'm going to go with dashes.

 

I was using the domain.com/topic/page instead of domain.com/topic-page so that someone could type in domain.com/topic/

From a human perspective I think it's nicer for organization. But how much of a difference will this make for SEO? Assuming all things remain equal. (ie: sample number of links, etc.)

 

with urls with spaces i have noted one problem that when we see those urls in any website where it is posted you will find some characters or symbols like "%20" in place of spaces so it is better to replace all spaces by dash "-".

 

Dashes or underscores have the same value now it doesn't matter which you use.

 

I prefer domain.com/topic/name-of-topic. Google preferred for a long time dashes to underscores, maybe other search engines have the same preferences.

Anyway you should avoid spaces in urls it might generate problems at copy paste.