Yeah, Underscores are really not recommended or recognized in terms of SEO purposes. I remember when I was starting to learn SEO, i really like to use underscores on urls.. Geezz.. I didn't know I'm doing wrong with that... Oh well, this is very good source of information... :)

SEO is more complicated than it often seems to be. Knowledge such as this is very helpful and useful.

I will definitely check back in the future because this website is a great source for useful information.

Thanks for the info.

It is definitely like that. The hyphens are allowed in domain names so they would definitely work better in any web address than other symbols

I didn't know that for a fact, but I've always felt a bit ookie about underscores for some reason, so I just don't use them. Thanks for the info!

I've also always used hyphens rather than underscores when naming web pages as part of a URL. Using hyphens not only influences better results on SERPs but also enhances readability.

My issue is that underscores preceded hyphens as the natural replacement of a space long before SEO and Google interjected with new standards, meaning the web addresses may not always make sense. What I mean is that we may soon be oblivious as to whether a word is properly hyphenated or is simply a space replacement. E.g:

www.well-known-places.com

instead of

www.well-known_places.com

This seems like a backwards step in Internet Usability.

I never knew that! I better get changing them! Thanks a lot

I avoid underscores mainly because if the text is a link that is underlined, the text appears to be spaced and the underscore is not seen. Many people don't understand that spaces in URLs are not allowed, and don't really think about it, thus the %20 that gets inserted. Many people have learned this by putting spaces in their file names and never giving it a second thought.

Search engines, the major ones anyway, don't care whether an underscore or a hyphen is used.

To see that they can recognize either without a problem, keep an eye on the text highlighted in the SERPs and sooner or later you will likely see just as many examples of words within underscored chunks being recognized as words separated by hyphens.

"To hyphen or not to hypen, is no longer the question." ;-)

Craig

• Google shows the first 60 to 70 characters in the search results. Make sure your important keywords occur early in the page title for scan-ability. If your title goes beyond 70 characters Google may cut off the title before 69 characters and display … at the end of your page title.
• Rather than making your page title just the keyword and/or starting your page title with the keyword, sometimes it helps to add in a descriptive modifier before your core keyword. This helps ensure your page is less likely to get filtered out of the search results (and thus makes your rankings more stable) while helping you rank for additional terms.
• Page titles are used to draw in clicks from search results amongst many anonymous competing offers, thus they present an opportunity to differentiate yourself from the competition and qualify prospects to your offer.
• Good titles evoke an emotional response, ask a question, or promise something (that the landing page fulfills).
• Since the page title is one of the few elements search engines can show searchers before sending them to your site, they place significant weight on the words in the page title. In addition, some people link to pages using their official page title as the link anchor text.
• Overlapping modifiers in a reasonable and readable way allows you improve your relevancy scores for an array of keywords, but they still need to read well. Rather than loading up page titles with a keyword list it is better to write a clear compelling offer that contains your keywords and describes your services.
• Qualifying the wrong prospective clients with a bad offer will lead to a low conversion rate, or wasting time servicing non-clients. For example, if you sell something that is high end you wouldn’t necessarily want to rank for your keyword with modifiers like cheap and discount, as servicing those people will waste your time.
• Page titles should be differentiated from page to page on your site. Unless limited by the size and scope of your site, it is best not to have all your page titles follow the exact same formula across your site. You also should not use the same keyword at or near the start of every page title.
• The format, order, and word selection of the words in your page title should be (at least slightly) different than the words in your meta description and on page headers.
• If you have a strong brand you may want to place it at the end of your page title. If you have one of the leading trusted Internet brands (Amazon, eBay, etc.) then it might make sense to place your brand at the start of the page title. In most cases the page title should still be more focused on the page copy and searcher’s intent than on your brand.
• If you blog or are creating linkbait make sure you try to create headlines that draw clicks by using magnetic headline principals.

"To hyphen or not to hypen, is no longer the question."

well, that was esoteric nonsense from the first day. same with most SEO trends.

first learn how to build a search before trying manipulating its results. it's funny to see so many self-called SEO experts not even slightly understanding how the technical side of a search works (and they initiate stupid legends like the "underscore problem" above).

Having recently emabarked on a new seo campaign the pitfalls within seo are apparent. It seems all to easy to get it wrong but difficult to get it right! If you think seo is easy your probably doing the wrong things - or so I am led to believe.

Blogs like this can be a great source of information, keep up the good work guys.