Plus signs + in URL

How are plus signs in url, are they better or worse then - (seo wise)

any input is great.

 

I've only heard that dashes (-) are meant to separate words in SE algos so I think those would be better than + signs.

 

"-" are better for SEO.

 

I think + signs would do more harm to your SEO and I'd stick to the + signs.

 

i've seen plenty of sites have search queries listed #1 with plus signs, do you really think it plays out in the algortherom of google?

 

sorry i was in denial thanks for all your responses, i think i'm going to give the + sign a try since any other way would be very time consuming. I was just wondering exactly how bad it would be (meaning would it be dier to my site or just a small opsticale) thanks

 

If you wanna figure how bad it's gonna be...you'll have to try it and observe the results

 

Plus signs should not be used. In certain search engines (Tiscali for example) the urls break if they have a plus sign in them.

 

How about "_", I haven't seen to many dashes... actually, seen a mix of all three? Would you recomment the "-" over the "_" and "+" signs.

 

- is best then no space at all then _ then +

 

but how about google, i dont care about tiscalla, ive seen plenty of sites well ranked with + signs

 

There is no problem with +, it's a word separator just like -. Just don't use _, it's NOT a word separator.
Check out news.com if you want to see a website that's doing fairly well with +.

 

See? That's exactly what my thoughts were from the beginning, thank you Icheb, I gave you a rep point for that

Like I said about 3 times I have seen sites rank #1 in google with + signs in them. But I do have to disagree with you, although I am neutral and could careless if _ was bad or good, from what I see, sites with _ do well too, in fact, DP does well for many search results and they have full on query strings, it doesn't seem to hurt there SERP's, after all I found this site search from google and the page I came in on was an actual thread.

I thank everyone here for there opinions, it was very productive conversation of the age old question of how url's should look to be SEO, but my stance is that it doesn't really matter that much except the keywords inside the url.

I do agree with all of you that - is probably the best if there is even a best/worst, but hey, only google and god know if it truely does matter, everything else is just opinions and expierences.

 

Matt Cutts has confirmed that a - is the best thing to use. I agree that there is not much difference but every little helps.

 

+ or - both are same acc to search engine, but we use - more offen like if u buy domain name there u dont get + sign , slowly - became more popular, as u asked for search engine both both are same i think.

 

Don't listen to him, it's pure nonsense.

Sounds like "I like you, now you can play with my bat mobile".

 

Either back up your claims or shut up.

 

John - He is actually right about the _ (although not about the +)

Its obvious you CAN use the + and _ and still have your page rank. The question originally though was which is the best to use in the eyes of SE's (especially Google) which is without question -

 

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/dashes-vs-underscores/
Whoops, I guess it's you who is talking "pure nonsense". Always sucks to be a smartass and then be proven wrong.

And I'm still going with "+ is ok", especially since news.com is using it.

 

If you read the original post, its not whether its OK or not. I think everyone would agree you can still get indexed using it. The question is if there is some benefit to using - rather then +