Hyphen vs dash11/18/2023 Can I Use Hyphens in Domain Names?ĭomain name SEO is a whole ‘nother beast, but as a rule of thumb: don’t use hyphens in domain names. Once you move to a structure using hyphens, it will take Google some time to crawl and index the new URLs, so keep an eye on potential errors with an SEO audit tool like SiteGuru. If you’re having trouble ranking with underscores, use 301 redirects to point the old page’s signals to the hyphenated new one. If you’re currently using underscores in URLs and still getting the results you want, there is no need to remove or change them. URLs are vital for SEO because, in addition to your website content, such as titles, meta descriptions, and headings, search engines use URLs to determine the content of your page and how it should ran k. And the way it works is that we need to be careful about where we are segmenting because many things on the internet, things that people write about have an underscore in them, so we can't easily segment at underscore and that's why we are recommending dashes.” Why Do URLs Matter So Much? Basically we use some parts of the URL for understanding what the page is about. “There's a difference and that's in our segmenter. In August of 2011, Google's Matt Cutts released a video reaffirming unambiguously that hyphens are the way to go for SEO URLs and will remain so for the foreseeable future.Īs Google’s Gary Illyes confirmed in 2022: Matt promptly rectified this idea on his blog, but the misconception lingered. It implied that Google considered underscores to be word separators. The bone of contention started due to a poorly-worded comment by Google's Matt Cutts in 2007. The debate surrounding URL structure within the SEO industry has existed for some time. It’s hard to see the underscores with the standard online hyperlink formatting. They’re clearly visible, unlike underscores, which may often look like pure spaces in an URL. Plus, when you look at it from a UX perspective - dashes are easier to understand for visitors. The easier it is for Google to read and interpret your URLs, the more your site will appear for relevant search queries. “Learn-SEO-for-beginners” (with hyphens) is more legible to Google’s robots, and they would interpret it correctly as “learn SEO for beginners.”įrom there, the bots can return your page as a result for different keyword combinations, such as: Underscores in your URLs will not be recognized.įor example, Google would interpret the phrase “learn_seo-for beginners” (with underscores) as “learnseoforbeginners.” Google universally recognizes them as word separators, unlike underscores ( _ ), which we often use for filters, UTM, etc. You should use hyphens ( - ) in your URLs. Should You Use Underscores or Hyphens for SEO URLs? Did you know there is a big difference between using underscores and hyphens in your SEO URLs? In this article, you’ll learn which method Google prefers (and why) - plus, I’ll share some of my best practices for SEO and URLs.
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