In order to get more keywords, I have added ?videoname=xxx instead of videoid=##. Now, the video name is a string like "Digital Point", and on the browser/searchengine url it will be http://domain.com/index.php?videoname=Digital Point Now, my question: Is there any difference in seo or user liking/traffic in using %20 over _? I was thinking that if I replace the %20 with an underscore _, it will be easier for the user to read the name and click the link rather than look at a bunch of %20's that look gibrish. Does it make any difference in search engines as well (pr, better indexing etc)?
Dashes are preferred to underscores because dashes are treated the same as spaces. underscore: google.com/search?q=stock%5finvesting dash: google.com/search?q=stock%2dinvesting space: google.com/search?q=stock+investing Note the dash and space results are the same. In other words, they are treated the same by Google. I don't know about %20's from an SEO perspective, but it looks pretty sloppy from a user perspective. I would use dashes rather than spaces (%20) for your users' sake.