YouTube home Comedy Week on YouTube
Upload

Underscores vs. dashes in URLs

GoogleWebmasterHelp GoogleWebmasterHelp·588 videos
86,474
53,860
Like     Dislike 6

Sign in to YouTube

Sign in with your Google Account (YouTube, Google+, Gmail, Orkut, Picasa, or Chrome) to like GoogleWebmasterHelp's video.

Sign in to YouTube

Sign in with your Google Account (YouTube, Google+, Gmail, Orkut, Picasa, or Chrome) to dislike GoogleWebmasterHelp's video.

Sign in to YouTube

Sign in with your Google Account (YouTube, Google+, Gmail, Orkut, Picasa, or Chrome) to add GoogleWebmasterHelp's video to your playlist.

Uploaded on Aug 5, 2011

Matt Cutts explains the difference between how Google interprets underscores and dashes in a URL.

Have a question? Ask it in our Webmaster Help Forum: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p...

Want your question to be answered on a video like this? Follow us on Twitter and look for an announcement when we take new questions: http://twitter.com/googlewmc

More videos: http://www.youtube.com/GoogleWebmaste...
Webmaster Central Blog: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspo...
Webmaster Central: http://www.google.com/webmasters

Loading icon Loading...

Loading icon Loading...

Loading icon Loading...

The interactive transcript could not be loaded.

Loading icon Loading...

Loading icon Loading...

Ratings have been disabled for this video.
Rating is available when the video has been rented.
This feature is not available right now. Please try again later.

Top Comments

  • sKIPper76M

    PLEASE UPVOTE

    There is also a usability problem with having underscores in URLs. Since URLs are generally displayed with an underline, an underscore in the URL could potentially get "lost" in the user's eyes. Thus, that underscore may be perceived as a space.

    This may be not be a problem if the user just needs to click on the URL (wherein the perception whether its an underscore or space doesn't matter), but it may be a problem in cases such as dictating the URL to a friend over a phone, etc.

    · 20

    Sign in to YouTube

    Sign in with your YouTube Account (YouTube, Google+, Gmail, Orkut, Picasa, or Chrome) to rate sKIPper76M's comment.

    Sign in to YouTube

    Sign in with your YouTube Account (YouTube, Google+, Gmail, Orkut, Picasa, or Chrome) to rate sKIPper76M's comment.
  • Ashley Sheridan

    Yeah I agree. It's terrible when a company has a service and then tells us how to make best use of it. It's as bad as those help pages for all the software on my computer. How dare they tell me how to use it, now other people are going to be more productive than me because they are reading the same docs.

    · 4

    Sign in to YouTube

    Sign in with your YouTube Account (YouTube, Google+, Gmail, Orkut, Picasa, or Chrome) to rate Ashley Sheridan's comment.

    Sign in to YouTube

    Sign in with your YouTube Account (YouTube, Google+, Gmail, Orkut, Picasa, or Chrome) to rate Ashley Sheridan's comment.
    in reply to Xah Lee (Show the comment)

All Comments (61)

Sign in now to post a comment!
  • ScottyDMcom

    Bug; You're thinking of domain names, yes? Traditionally only 37 characters have been allowed in domain names: a-z, 0-9, and -. Upper or lower case is irrelevant in the domain name.

    Some phrases should never have their spaces removed. For example: penisland (net) -> pen-island, speedofart (com) -> speed-of-art, are real sites with unfortunate names. More people should use that hyphen.

    BTW, China (and other countries) want domains with the full unicode set.

    ·

    Sign in to YouTube

    Sign in with your YouTube Account (YouTube, Google+, Gmail, Orkut, Picasa, or Chrome) to rate ScottyDMcom's comment.

    Sign in to YouTube

    Sign in with your YouTube Account (YouTube, Google+, Gmail, Orkut, Picasa, or Chrome) to rate ScottyDMcom's comment.
    in reply to Bug InSoup (Show the comment)
  • ScottyDMcom

    Indi; Technically those people are called squatters or cyber-squatters, not spammers.

    ·

    Sign in to YouTube

    Sign in with your YouTube Account (YouTube, Google+, Gmail, Orkut, Picasa, or Chrome) to rate ScottyDMcom's comment.

    Sign in to YouTube

    Sign in with your YouTube Account (YouTube, Google+, Gmail, Orkut, Picasa, or Chrome) to rate ScottyDMcom's comment.
    in reply to Indi Jones (Show the comment)
  • Adam Arnold

    This old stuff is so much more informative than the videos you're putting out these days. Please bring back the good stuff :-(

    ·

    Sign in to YouTube

    Sign in with your YouTube Account (YouTube, Google+, Gmail, Orkut, Picasa, or Chrome) to rate Adam Arnold's comment.

    Sign in to YouTube

    Sign in with your YouTube Account (YouTube, Google+, Gmail, Orkut, Picasa, or Chrome) to rate Adam Arnold's comment.
  • methodinsane

    How relevant is this info to google/seo in 2013?

    ·

    Sign in to YouTube

    Sign in with your YouTube Account (YouTube, Google+, Gmail, Orkut, Picasa, or Chrome) to rate methodinsane's comment.

    Sign in to YouTube

    Sign in with your YouTube Account (YouTube, Google+, Gmail, Orkut, Picasa, or Chrome) to rate methodinsane's comment.
  • Indi Jones

    Spammers bought many popular non-underscored and non-hyphenated domains and are reselling them at a huge ransom.

    ·

    Sign in to YouTube

    Sign in with your YouTube Account (YouTube, Google+, Gmail, Orkut, Picasa, or Chrome) to rate Indi Jones's comment.

    Sign in to YouTube

    Sign in with your YouTube Account (YouTube, Google+, Gmail, Orkut, Picasa, or Chrome) to rate Indi Jones's comment.
    in reply to Bug InSoup (Show the comment)
  • Indi Jones

    Has this methodology or its impact in SEO ranking changed since 2011?

    ·

    Sign in to YouTube

    Sign in with your YouTube Account (YouTube, Google+, Gmail, Orkut, Picasa, or Chrome) to rate Indi Jones's comment.

    Sign in to YouTube

    Sign in with your YouTube Account (YouTube, Google+, Gmail, Orkut, Picasa, or Chrome) to rate Indi Jones's comment.
  • Wynn Ryder

    I found a way to make money online.

    Check This website Money94.Com

    I subscribe to the website and after 15 days using the System

    I will able to make at least $500 a month. Now i subscribed with this website

    For last three months and my current income is $2000 a month, by using the system part Time I am still attach to my current day job, But after I cross the income what i am currently earning with my day job i will quit my day job and Working with this system full time.

    ·

    Sign in to YouTube

    Sign in with your YouTube Account (YouTube, Google+, Gmail, Orkut, Picasa, or Chrome) to rate Wynn Ryder's comment.

    Sign in to YouTube

    Sign in with your YouTube Account (YouTube, Google+, Gmail, Orkut, Picasa, or Chrome) to rate Wynn Ryder's comment.
  • Andreas Belivanakis

    Dashes instead of underscores is a no-brainer. The real question is, dashes, or no dashes? In other words, is redwidgets better than red-widgets?

    And does the correct answer (if there is one) depend on whether the dash or no dash term is in the domain itself, versus a folder or filename?

    ·

    Sign in to YouTube

    Sign in with your YouTube Account (YouTube, Google+, Gmail, Orkut, Picasa, or Chrome) to rate Andreas Belivanakis's comment.

    Sign in to YouTube

    Sign in with your YouTube Account (YouTube, Google+, Gmail, Orkut, Picasa, or Chrome) to rate Andreas Belivanakis's comment.
  • Brian Swanick

    This should be a commandment for local businesses. Thank you to the wonderful person who created 301's...although if you use a CMS, you probably will never have this problem. Others. Just not this one.

    ·

    Sign in to YouTube

    Sign in with your YouTube Account (YouTube, Google+, Gmail, Orkut, Picasa, or Chrome) to rate Brian Swanick's comment.

    Sign in to YouTube

    Sign in with your YouTube Account (YouTube, Google+, Gmail, Orkut, Picasa, or Chrome) to rate Brian Swanick's comment.
  • Bug InSoup

    why would I want to use _ when I can simply write twowordstogether?

    ·

    Sign in to YouTube

    Sign in with your YouTube Account (YouTube, Google+, Gmail, Orkut, Picasa, or Chrome) to rate Bug InSoup's comment.

    Sign in to YouTube

    Sign in with your YouTube Account (YouTube, Google+, Gmail, Orkut, Picasa, or Chrome) to rate Bug InSoup's comment.
  • Loading comment...
Loading...
Loading...
Working...
Sign in to add this to Watch Later