For SEO purposes, which is the best keyword separator, dashes or underscores?
- A search for “goldman sachs” returns 17.1M results
- “goldman-sachs” returns 17.4M results
- “goldman_sachs” returns only 27.5K results
- A search for “Bob Dylan” returns 22.5M results
- “Bob-Dylan” returns 22.6M results
- “Bob_Dyaln” returns 111K results
Takeaways:
- Results for search queries parsed by dashes are similar to queries separated by spaces
- Google does not treat underscores in search queries as a keyword separator
Looks like dashes rule. What do you think?
Sources:
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/dashes-vs-underscores/
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-underscores-hyphens/6010/
Clarification added October 15, 2008:
Yes, this relates to URL optimization.
Answers (16)
Dashes-are-best
Michael B.
Local Search Marketing Professional
Best Answers in: Search Marketing (2), Web Development (1)
The dashes/underscores thing relates to URLs generally, i.e., which should you use to separate words in filenames and folders in URLs.
I can't imagine anyone uses an underscore in a search query, so I'm not sure what you're trying to demonstrate here...
David F.
Digital Marketing Strategist specializing in Search and Social Media
Best Answers in: Graphic Design (1)
I assume you are referring to URL's (ie. domain.com/bob-dylan.com). According to Matt Cutts (Google employee and evangelist) dashes are preferred.
If you are referring to use of dashes or underscores in a keyword search, dashes are considered keyword separaters while underscores are treated as actual characters.
By why does this matter? Who searches with underscores?
Links:
I agree dashes wins. Also, a dash is more likely to be understood by novice users rather than a underscore.
christopher F. also suggests this expert on this topic:
Tony G.
Director, Search Engine Marketing and Digital Advertising at ADP / BZ Results and Internet Marketing Consultant
Dashes are my first choice because they have historically been preferred by search engines (they tend to see the dash as a space) and also because they are more effective from a usability perspective.
For instance, when linking to a page in an email client like Outlook, the link will automatically be underlined. This hides the underscore and makes it more difficult for the user to see and potentially limits the number links that a particular page will generate. This is an important consideration because search engines heavily weigh the number and quality of links pointing to each page.
Julee K.
Senior Production/Project Manager Envision Technology Marketing Group
Best Answers in: Direct Marketing (3), Advertising (2), Using LinkedIn (2), Event Marketing and Promotions (1), Events Marketing (1), Graphic Design (1), Sales Techniques (1)
Doubt anyone searches with an underscore...
Links:
Julee K. also suggests this expert on this topic:
Hey Jimmy Lim,
Here is my 2 cents worth.
If you are talking about putting keywords in to your blog or using meta tags,
it has been my experience to separate them with a comma. Reason being is: most people (myself included :-) ) do not take the time or effort to put the quotation marks ("") or even the brackets [] to refine their search.
So to sum it up, I would need to know:
Where are you putting the keywords into? IE. blog, website, meta tags etc.
How are you using the keywords in your blog/website?
And most of all, what was the result of your keyword research?
Just food for thought and I hope this helps,
Al (PaPaGrizz) Nelson
Feel free to respond at: admin@nelcopublishing.com
Links:
Dashes definitely as the others suggest. The reason Google does not treat underscores as separators (white space) goes back to their roots in software development. There are lots of older software terms that use underscores as part of the name, so they wanted to be able to search for those names and needed to include the underscore as an meaningful character.
Dashes are indeed the way to go as it also has advantages for usability.
Google did not treat underscores as separators in the past but that has changed in July 2007. Until then, any benefit that you would have gotten by having a keyword-rich URL was negated by the use of underscores separating those words.
See Matt Cuts' post on this at http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/dashes-vs-underscores/
Links:
Dashes are the better choice as detailed by the folks who cited usability, search engine and programming points here.
DASHES. why? Because real words have dashes in them. If Google sees a bunch of words separated by dashes, it doesn't know the difference. Meaning, whether it is a hyphenated word, or hyphenated keyword. They will likely refine this in future, but for now, it's the best option. Google has ignored keywords with underscores for us.
Hi,
Dashes is the best way. undersc. not help you also user can confuse due underscore. In the SEO Dashes is best and this will help rank well in the search engines. if your domain in dashes this will also help to get good ranking.
Thanks
Ajit
The safe bet is to go for dashes. I haven't seen any evidence of either having a negative impact on natural search listings, however in my experience there is a trend for dashes to perform well.
We always use dashes.
