Thread: Hyphens or Underscore

Update: It has been around 2 weeks since I have changed from underscores (_) to hyphens (-).

I have redirected all of the old urls to the new ones. Some (but not all) of my pages have been re-indexed to google.

So what changes have I noticed?

My traffic from google has DOUBLED (although not a huge amount to begin with).

Also, I am not sure why but I am getting much more pageviews than before.

Was it this change which doubled my traffic? I cannot be sure but it is the most logical explanation to me. (I have been expanding my site pretty rapidly so it could be because of that too).

Changing from underscores to hyphens will probably not increase your traffic that quickly for existing pages, but it may help new pages.

It can reinforce the themes for the pages, so it is possible that new pages are showing a better focus on your search phrases.

According to Google, using hyphens will not help your rank positions, but it does help spiders determine the theme for each page. That alone should strengthen your initial rank positions, so the two statements are a bit conflicting.

Ditto! I totally agree

Originally Posted by TopDogger

Changing from underscores to hyphens will probably not increase your traffic that quickly for existing pages, but it may help new pages.

It can reinforce the themes for the pages, so it is possible that new pages are showing a better focus on your search phrases.

According to Google, using hyphens will not help your rank positions, but it does help spiders determine the theme for each page. That alone should strengthen your initial rank positions, so the two statements are a bit conflicting.