FAQ - Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Should I Use Dashes (-) Or Underscores (_) In My URLs?
Many webmasters include their target keywords in their page URLs. It is also important, both for readability and search engine optimization, to separate those keywords. The most commonly used characters for this are the dash - and the underscore _ . There is a good deal of discussion as which is better for readability and SEO and why. Almost all discussion has come to this ultimate realization: dashes are preferable to underscores.
Here's why:
- Dashes are better for search - the technical details are somewhat complicated, but Google engineers have publically stated that this is the case.
- Dashes are better for readability - Underscores are much harder to read (especially in links that are underlined)
- Dashes are used in the English language - try and remember the last place you used an underscore in a sentence and it was grammatically correct.
Here's some proof in the form of Google results for keywords using these two characters:
- search engine friendly - 26,300,000 Google results
- search-engine-friendly - 1,530,000 Google Results
- search_engine_friendly - 476 Google results
