Sphinn - Underscores are now word separators, proclaims Google

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Underscores are now word separators, proclaims Google

Went Hot: July 24, 2007 - 9:23 am
Posted By: chriswinfield 712 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://news.com.com)
Category: Google

From Matt's talk on Saturday at WordCamp: "One key development that Matt shared with the audience was that underscores in URLs are now (or at least very soon to be) treated as word separators by Google."

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from MattC 712 days ago #

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That is great news, now for all URLs I made wrong in the past don't matter now. LOL

from bwelford 712 days ago #

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Perhaps the even more important implication of what he was saying is that the URL itself is a factor in the keyword ranking algorithm. Now if only we knew how important. :(

from dannysullivan 712 days ago #

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Barry also has a bit more background here:

http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/014260.html

from MattC 712 days ago #

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This is true. The SERPS could potentially go through a small flux because of the amount of competing pages with underscores in the URLs that are now considered equal. I'm sure it doesn't come close to trumping back links and content...

from MattC 712 days ago #

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Barry is linking to the same article that this is :)

from Eavesy 712 days ago # - show/hide this comment

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This is bad news for me, I have always been partial to using the hyphens and now I might loose a slight edge, I would guess it could make about 0.25% - 0.50% difference in rankings.

from Teddie 712 days ago #

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I actually think this could be quite a disruptive change as it will suddenly alter the way massive volumes of link text are calculated. It will be interesting to see how much of a ripple it causes in the SERPs.

from ladynada 712 days ago #

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I never bothered to use the title post in my permalinks on Wordpress. I think it looks awful, personally. I like using the date, because to me, the date of the article, its freshness, is more important.

I dont see why it makes any difference to google for WP articles since the title is in the meta title element already.

I guess I am just a maverick.

nada

from everett 712 days ago #

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Eavesy hyhens always have been treated as a word separator, so you won't be losing any edge really. Well, unless you count the fact that others will be gaining the edge that you already had.

from g1smd 711 days ago #

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So, if Google is going to do that, how long before other search engines do? Which other ones already do?

from dannysullivan 711 days ago #

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http://www.bruceclay.com/blog/archives/2007/07/search_engine_o_6.html

and

http://sphinn.com/story/1101

also have more on Matt's talk.

from WebmasterT 711 days ago #

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This should make those who always respond with "just because they highlight it, it doesn't mean....". Well one could now easily argue the opposite. So far we are 2 for 2. This makes a lot of sense when you consider the computing power required to highlight words. Seems trivial but to an engine that is ovulating it's speed in milliseconds and doing millions of searches a day it is a big deal! So unlike the webmaster who does way too much stuff like this just because they can, Google engineers don't have that luxury.

This has been one of my favorite research topics. I have always been of the opinion that full optimization of a website includes maximizing keywords in the Information Architecture (fancy words for urls) I also have done a little interesting research (based on a limited audience) that indicates the urls included at the end of the listing in the SERP are:

1. mostly used by the more Savvy users

2. majority of users only use them if they are screening certain sites or the keywords are highlighted.

3. Most importantly most users outside this industry don't see lots of - or _ as spam (many weren't even aware of the use of the term spam in regards to SE, they think you are referring to email!).

Many in this industry claim -'s looks spammy, but, IMO, there is good reason to look into this further because this seems based on bias/hypothesis and is always proclaimed by someone obviously against the use of -'s in urls. Case in point, I never seen -'s as spammy looking! I guess because I use hyphens (especially for folders) and have only seen increased traffic due to better rankings. I generally do a number of changes so I'm definitely not of the opinion that - or _ is the 'sole' reason (silver bullet) for improvements, but I have believed for a very very long time, they are only positive with no negatives. IMO, a lot of people have poo pooed this practice because they weren't quick enough to use them and don't want their competitors using them because it puts them at a disadvantage.

It is no surprise to me that _ is treated as a space, since, when it is used in a url that is what it is replacing so it is very logical if Google are weighting keywords in urls for Google to parse the string and replace these characters with the intended character. These are "best practices" for naming files/folders because spaces in urls have been problematic in the past. IMO, - is still preferred over _ because when the url is used as a link the hyphen is visible, a _ is not unless decoration is turned off using CSS.

from WizardMan 710 days ago #

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I kinda liked it the old way. Probably becuase I always knew that hyphens were seperators and underscores were joiners. Problem I have with this and I'm sure a couple of people will agree is that by making underscores seperators, people who now want words joined in a pages title, but they still want their pages too look good can no longer do it!

How do you prevent your page name from looking like a long string of characters?

from mikemurray 710 days ago #

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I think it will have a nominal impact for most terms. If underscores work to separate keywords, maybe it will mean the most to highly competitive keywords (like if one term goes from #11 from #10 (next page). If you're constructing these page names, go after the keywords that best represent the page content AND the site theme. You can always build in core keywords with the separator - like sports, food, movies, uniforms, etc. In other words, make sure you're choosing the most ideal keywords on either side. You have the opportunity in page creation - no sense ruining it with some abbreviation. Keep in mind that all of the so-called ranking signals come with different weight. I've seen large clients rank for all sorts of words that aren't in the page name or the page title. Search engines also seem to be able to detect keywords within domain names that don't have the need for a hyphen.

from g1smd 695 days ago #

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Matt Cutts posted today:

""But note that I also said if you’d already made your site with underscores, it probably wasn’t worth trying to migrate all your urls over to dashes. If you’re starting fresh, I’d still pick dashes.""

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/whitehat-seo-tips-for-bloggers/

That sounds like a good plan. Underscores in URLs in links "disappear" when underlined.