Comments on SEO & Credit Card Shopping Carts - Pioneer Websites: Underscores vs Hyphens SEO Conclusive Proof

Thank you for contributing your conclusions. This ...

2010-05-18T07:16:09.766+10:00

Thank you for contributing your conclusions. This is what you have actually proved:

1) Since human beings search for real words, you should separate the real words with a character Google recognises to separate them, not an underscore.

2) URIs are NOT the biggest determining factor in ranking. We agree. Everyone knows that - the biggest factor is inlinks.

Assuming your search was in google.com (given your American spelling of optimisation) you will note the #1 spot with underscores has 42,613 inlinks TO THAT PAGE ALONE according to Yahoo site search.

The #5 spot is the first with hyphens, and it has only 442 inlinks.
That's 1.03% of the #1 spot.
It's only got 37.3% of the inlinks of the #4 spot.

The #6 spot has 6,125 inlinks to the page, but ranks BELOW the #5 with 442 inlinks. (In fact, the hyphenated #5 only has 4,976 links to the ENTIRE SITE!)

Conclusions:

1) Inlinks is the greatest influence on ranking in Google.
2) Hyphenated URIs improve your rank, even if you have less inlinks than your competitor.

I did a quick Google search of "Search Engine...

2010-05-18T03:15:47.477+10:00

I did a quick Google search of "Search Engine Optimization" (without the quotes). That's the way a human being would type it in; a human looks for real words.

The very first result is a URL using underscores. There are 3 results with underscores in the URL on page 1. There is only 1 result with dashes in the URL on page 1.

Conclusions:

1) human beings search for real words.
2) Google does not prefer dashes to underscores when returning URIs to fit real-world, real-word searches that human beings type in.

@PoetyWeb: We haven't asked to be knighted as...

2009-11-11T00:33:17.774+11:00

@PoetyWeb:

We haven't asked to be knighted as expert - only that you consider the evidence of underscore behaviour on its own merit.

You're only comment on the reasoning presented was that no one searches for the example phrase… which has nothing to do with observing the indexed behaviour of underscores.

Using the inurl: operator proves the exact same point we were making - if you had've taken your own advice you would have noticed that...

Here is an example for you, as you've recommended:

26,700 results for inurl:search_engine_optimisation

731 results for inurl:search_engine_

Google isn't breaking out the characters search_engine_ from within the characters search_engine_optimisation or else there'd be MORE results, not LESS... let alone separating the words 'search' and 'engine'.

If you perform the second search, you'll see most of the results are from URLs that use a valid word break character after the second underscore... namely an opening parentheses, like this:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_(disambiguation)

Case closed. Again.
Underscores are not treated as word breaks by Google in urls.

BTW, yes, Vanessa Fox wrote one article on Matt's blog and he edited it in two places - we were not being misleading when saying this was information published by him. Are you saying it held incorrect views and he still approved it? On his own mattcutts.com blog? I didn't think so.

Perhaps you could you kindly show us where Matt actually denounces both underscore vs hyphen blog posts as you've claimed, instead of pointing to a summary by someone else of his verbal quote? There was a lot of confusion about Matt's comments at that event, and he has addressed them since.

It doesn't matter, the facts still speak for themselves. Thank you for suggesting we find the extra proof by searching within URLs only.

P.S. Re: spelling - You obviously didn't even read my entire post. I referred to my use of the British English spelling as this is a .com.au blog written in Sydney.

There are other countries outside of the U.S. - if by nothing else, you can tell from the ccTLD in the address bar of your browser. It is suffixed with a ".au" for Australia.

You do know that you misspelled "optimization...

2009-11-10T06:54:03.740+11:00

You do know that you misspelled "optimization", yes? In each of your tests, Google tried to correct you with the correct spelling, but you apparently did not pick up on that clue.

No one will search on search_engine_optimisation, spelled your way or the right way. That is not the test you should be conducting. You should search on search engine optimization and see how many results have _ in the links. THAT will give you the true search result set.

Regarding your "supporting evidence". Looks like you read up on Matt Cutts…. In 2005:

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/dashes-vs-underscores/

You linked to the Guest post (IE: Matt did not write it!): "Vanessa Fox on Organic Site Review session" from APRIL 21, 2006

He denounces both blogs himself, in 2007:

Underscores are now word separators, proclaims Google
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9748779-7.html

Please, before you put yourself as an expert, please become an expert.

Thanks,
Jenn

@Vaughn You make a good point: "But who rea...

2009-11-02T09:24:33.014+11:00

@Vaughn

You make a good point:

"But who really searches for terms like 'search_engine_optimisation'? It's frequently argued that user's have a hard time even finding the underscore"

No one does.

But that's exactly why it doesn't assist your SEO to use the underscore in file names, because that's not what people are using in searches. They're not using hyphens either, but at least Google ignores them in searches. It doesn't ignore underscores, and that's what we proved above.

You also made another good point - underscores read more intuitively than hyphens.

Unfortunately, underscores also serve a very specific purpose in some searches, as Matt Cutts once pointed out, using a specific (but nerdy) example.

We weren't discussing how Google *should* index the use of underscore, rather, we're looking for indications as to how they *do* index the use of underscores.

Your postulation may be fulfilled in the future, however currently the best word separator is a hyphen. If you're correct and they are later given equal rights, then having a site using hyphens is not going to be any disadvantage, yet using underscores before such a speculated time will be.

Thank you for your bold comment, 'Anonymous...

2009-11-02T09:13:30.252+11:00

Thank you for your bold comment, 'Anonymous'!

Perhaps you could tender some actual reasoning behind your claim that the article's reasoning is invalid?

P.S. Glad you liked our little audio experiment, you're the first to comment negatively and it's only been a couple of years...

This is obviously a thinly veiled advertisement fo...

2009-10-31T00:25:49.623+11:00

This is obviously a thinly veiled advertisement for pioneer websites.... a mob that chooses to embed audio in their homepage and thus shouldn't be trusted with anything more technical than a bottle opener.

But who really searches for terms like "searc...

2009-07-06T14:27:11.960+10:00

But who really searches for terms like "search_engine_optimisation"? It's frequently argued that user's have a hard time even finding the underscore, let alone using it en masse.

I think normal people would never ever use an underscore in any search, unless they are looking for something with an underscore in the text (just like a hyphen). So including underscores in a search query as a comparison is really a straw man argument.

More importantly, a dash/hyphen is an real character in hyphenated words, where as an underscore has no inherent meaning, which fits the meaning of a space much better semantically.(grammer?)

Consider this search in both google and bing:
"dashes vs underscores"

Matt Cutt's statements are all fairly old, and don't hold up in real world search results. Consider how well Wikipedia does in google, and it's all underscores.

Recent online SEO rumblings (and plenty of testing) indicates that google doesn't even consider keywords in URLs. Making any argument regarding the content of the URL moot.

Also, as an application programmer I consider: underscore = implied whitespace, hyphen = word character.

Consider these two urls:
www.example.com/the-best-co-pilot.html
www.example.com/the_best_co-pilot.html

With hyphens you are stuck with a less "real world/normal person" search friendly url, simply because the hyphen actually has meaning in English. Where as the underscore has no meaning, and therefore is just a word delimiter.

Ultimately, search engines will change to return the best possible result to fit what a real world/normal person wants. And it appears this is already happening. Search engines already recognize the underscore as a valid (and I postulate, in the future preferred) word separator.