Page 2 - Hyphens or underscores?

While I agree that "hyphen" is the better course to take, I have used "_" in the passed and had great success -- probably not because of "_" just that there isn't a major appreciable difference.

Search-Engine is read by bots as Search Engine

where

Search_Engine is read by bots as SearchEngine

...thus the edge would be to the former - but likely would not change "rankings even one position" unless competitiveness is extremely close in all other total variables.

The bolded part is the most important part of this discussion.

hi tonyfelice,

To the best of my knowledge this_is_the_best_way.

your post is entirely untrue.
please see the thread on underscores and google.
search_engine is seen as "search_engine" by google.
since google would not even see the words 'search' or 'engine' in this string i would have to say that would "change rankings" substantially.

rz showed me the light already using my SEO_AM handle also. Can only find me on G using the "_". Remove that and search on "seo am" you just ain't gonna find this kid. That test convinced more than any other cause it involved this kid personally. And that is the truth.

Please don't confuse what you see and compare this to what a macro-program sees (or reads) as you would be wrong.

non-alpha numeric chararcters e.g. !@#$%^&*() etc. are not observed by bots they are redundant code thus ignored.

While you can still view such occurances put this in perspective of why the question and/or test was asked or developed.

I'll assume (but could be wrong) to appreciate "if" any appreciable edge is provided for the purposes of ranking.

As the character underscore is ignored by bots - its use has zero effect on ranking, with exception to negatively effect ranks (if at all possible). As domain names came out with hyphens a special case and as previously noted a bots acknowledge this as a word separator (delimiter) thus potentially provide a slight edge (again if at all).

Notwithstanding - you already (almost completely) agreed with me in your opening post e.g.


...if you wish to disagree now > I'm fine with that - but my post is entirely correct at least to say: you gain nothing from using "_"

fathom....

you say—

the underscore is not ignored by bots [googlebot]. it is viewed by google as a character. a person might as well type a "t" or a "m" or a "z" in place of the underscore...because it will have the same effect of creating a totally new word out of the 2 or more words joined by the underscore.

a hyphen is viewed as a space. [or ignored as you say]
a underscore is not.

did you not look at the underscore test page?

did you not read my follow post which specifically discusses how the underscore creates a giant new word—

"cganveeeing_doreaivnically_phreanatoindment"

...and how this word has been indexed by google here:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&...G=Google+Search

but that the parts of that very long word...the parts that are separated by the underscore are nowhere to be found...they are not recognized by google...they are not indexed by google...the page is not found here:
http://www.google.com/search?num=10...ing&btnG=Search


here is your original post—

there is a world of difference.
the difference is that the words between a hyphen will be recognized by google and the words between an underscore wont. if these are valuable keywords in a title...then an underscore makes them literally invisible. how can that not be a 'major appreciable difference'?

if "cganveeeing" was an important keyword...this test page would not show up at all for this word when someone searched for it. that would be a ranking failure.

your other point...
[one that i already proved untrue]
states this—
"Search_Engine is read by bots as SearchEngine"

the correct statement would be...
"Search_Engine is read by bots as Search_Engine"

the proof of this is that there is no match for the really long word [created by the joining underscores] if you remove the underscores and join the 3 strings without them—

"cganveeeingdoreaivnicallyphreanatoindment"

the test page is not found here:
http://www.google.com/search?num=10...ent&btnG=Search

.

I can't be bothered...


I am blatantly incompetent.

It is questionable how much a hyphenated phrase helps in domain, directory, or file name, but I have seen for myself that at the very least they help a site to be found by allowing each word in the phrase to be found.

As you may notice, I have become a big fan of hyphenated domain names; well, as long as I'm not typing them in... but most people click on links anyway, so I don't consider that to be a big problem.

I prefer no hyphen so you can do this <a title="SEO" href="http://www.seochat.com">SEO</a><a title="Chat" href="http://www.seochat.com">Chat</a>

for SEOChat
with a hyphen that extra character causes a problem! ;)

Ah, link anchor stuffing....! Very interesting. This is new to me so I suppose it may be new to many search engines.

However, since the URLS are identical and in such close proximity, it should be an easy technique to parse for. Do you not think like many such methods it will soon be discovered and rendered useless, at best...? :-)

And I would not let that restrict your hyphenated indulgence:

treated as a space, this should be as effective <a title="SEO" href="http://www.seo-chat.com">SEO-</a><a title="Chat" href="http://www.seo-chat.com">Chat</a>