I dont agree, and have been doing underscores, but i think i will do hyphens now. I use underscore because its easy to read low visual profile and its easy to rename specific components i. A user would like to download a directory of files to their desktop. The debate over whether to use dashes or underscores to represent spaces in urls is rather heated in the web development community, but not quite as extremely so as that of whether to use tabs or spaces when indenting code. Theyre great for human readability, but theyre remarkably inconvenient in computer resource locators. You dont want address bars to scroll horizontally or url only links to linewrap.
Either way it makes the url less of a headache to read if itissuperlong dot com. Jump in the bunker, fire away, and get the victory. But if you use a mouse or trackpad for computing, the hyphen is a gamechanger. They seem to only make sense at the end of a url to separate words in the title of an article. Which keyword separator is better in url dash or underscore. Wed like to clarify the things that matter when making a choice so you can avoid making a bad decision. In fact, john mueller explicitly advises against redirecting urls just to resolve the underscore vs. This is a small, tiny, miniscule thing, but often the game is won in the trenches of minutia. All the shopping carts have a friendly url structure, for e. What should be preferred in urls dash or underscore. An underscore, on the other hand, is considered a word joiner. As of 2012, dashes are still the best way to optimize your seo urls. Nothing more than a religious choice personally, i preferred underscores because i felt dashes intruded upon the words while underscores stayed at the bottom out of the way. However, dealing with underscore and hypens is still complicated.
So if your application is named myapp and you are using the default controller, this url should work also assuming that you are running the web2py on the same machine. Consider organizing your content so that urls are constructed logically and in a manner that is most intelligible to humans when possible, readable words rather than long id numbers. Hyphens and underscores in file names dan madden medium. Link with underscore does not work meta stack exchange. However, the link does not work in the resulting html. As you can see, a layman cannot recognize the underscore used in the second url. When necessary for readability, use hyphens to separate words. Id add as part of the guess that programmers use the dash as subtraction so underscore is used. They seem to be treated as a space where an underscore is not. Then you should know the difference between dash and underscore in seo. At the same time, some other shopping carts dont have such structure e. I was an underscore guy until just a couple of months ago. It would be great if the standards document expressed a clear opinion on how multiple words should be concatenated in url path segments.
One hint might be found in perl regular expressions. I often get asked whether id recommend dashes or underscores for words in urls. A filename with spaces has to be surrounded by quotes when referenced at the command line. Google views hyphens in urls as word separators while an underscore in your url will not be. Complete url optimization details can be found here.
The tradeoff at that point becomes about readability and reliability vs speed, and id suggest that using loops is an optimization step in most cases where youd want to use a utility library, rather than a good starting point. Overly complex urls, especially those containing multiple parameters, can cause a problems for crawlers by creating unnecessarily high numbers of urls that point to identical or similar content on your site. Urls should not use underscores, spaces, or any other characters to separate words. In all actuallity the url is given little weight in the search engine algo. I was talking with someone recently who thought that no matter how long the url is, keep it hyphen or underscore free. Here is why fyi, my testing was done with ie 9 first of all, the underscore character is a perfectly acceptable character in a url. Capture and match zero or more nonslash characters. The hyphen is still better, as i see it, but by a slim margin. What you have to remember, though, is that the filename is part of the direct url to that image. Using a hyphen is one less keystroke than underscore or camel case no shift necessary. No real aesthetic reason, just a matter of efficiency.
Discussion in search engine optimization started by rahul pandit, aug 27, 2014. From implementation point of view there is not so much difference. Underscore in url gets escaped to %5f and does not work. So much so i had originally made that the default url scheme in subtext for friendly urls. Googles support article on seo discusses the use logical. The biggest danger for hyphens is that the same character typically is also used for subtraction and numerical negation ie. Web browsers can deal with it fine in most circumstances. Spaces inside of a url or a linked file basically generate a faulty. I made a booboo recently and ended up with space characters in a huge number or urls, they. If youre displaying a full url as a link, underscores become a huge usability problem. Will urldashes, minus or hyphen affect ranking in search results. As nouns the difference between underscore and dash is that underscore is an underline.
A sites url structure should be as simple as possible. The link that you provided explains how to structure url if you have hierarchy of entities. Is it better to use underscores or dashes in a url. Use hyphens to separate the words in url instead of using other symbols such as underscores. Do a search for underscore and it will show lots of results. Since so many people have complained about it, i will in this description show you the difference between a hyphen and an underscore. As evident, a layman cannot recognize the underscore used in the second url. As verbs the difference between underscore and dash is that underscore is to underline. Im only talking about audio files, wav samples, kontakt instruments, etc. Hyphens are short little lines used to connect two or more words that work together as a. The hyphenunderscore translation works only if youre running the new router. I am optimizing a website that has underscores in url.
When a search engine looks at a url for keywords, unlike hyphens between words, underscores are not treated as spaces that separate keywords. When you double click windows highlights that part of the name only which is more expediant than a clickdrag. Matt quickly corrected this perception on his blog, but the belief persisted. Most agree that hyphens or underscores are the best punctuation to use in urls. Im trying to use an underscore in a link in my answers at stackoverlow. Straight from the horses mouth dash not underscore.
How to delete hyphen and underscore from url string in nginx. Urls with a few variables in them can rank better than a searchenginefriendly. Check out his webmaster hangout for the full explanation. Also, the only uppercase letters i care to have in my code are commented section titles. For example, if youre searching for information about aviation, a url like.
Although urls can include id numbers and codes, the best practice is to use words that. Google views hyphens in urls as word separators while an underscore in your url will not be recognized. At the same time, some other shopping carts dont have such structure, for e. Is there any reason why forward slash should be used instead of hyphen. Seo benefits of using hyphensdashes over underscores. Sharepoint found the word with a space in the url, even if there was a space or underscore. It is clear by now that using an underscore while picking the domain name is bad practice and it looks like using a dash is way. I used to think the choice of using dashes vs underscores to separate words in an url was simply a matter of personal preference. Most business owners are not sure which way to go, here are some guidelines to help. I just tried the same site in firefox and clicking on the navigation link for forms and support shows this url in. It emphasizes the page name with capitalization, and the underscore seems like a clearer and more intuitive worddelimiter than the hyphen. Google has traditionally considered the underscore as a true character and not a separator. Dashes will tend to work with word wrapping when they need to, in a logical place, whereas if you use underscores.
1014 464 515 1371 367 1327 497 247 25 1150 1581 1420 946 542 153 389 8 1219 1253 513 406 1098 410 1244 951 947 542 236 97 357 502