/Google_Underscores_and-Dashes.help

[DotNetWebs]

Firstly thanks to DuaneJackson for bringing this to my attention.

Duane implies in another thread that Google ranks the hyphen character "-" above the underscore character "_" when used as a word separator e.g ./horsham-forum.aspx will rank higher (for the terms horsham and forum) than horsham_forum.asxp.

I must admit I had not heard this before and at first found it hard to believe. IMO the underscore is more 'human readable' and as I have been brought up to use this as separator in programming languages it seems a far more natural choice.

As I am about to launch a major project that has over 2000 dynamically rewritten URL's I thought I had better investigate this further.

From all the research I have done its seem that not only is Duane's statement correct but also the consensus of opinion is that Google does not recognise the underscore as a word separator at all. Google will not recognise the individual words in either form (i.e. ./horsham_forum.aspx is no better than ./horshamwforum.aspx)

Fortunately it is relatively easy for me to recode my URL rewriting engine before this project goes live. It will obviously be more hassle to do this after the site is live and the pages have been indexed.

So thanks again Duane for pointing this out. If anybody else has any experiences or opinions on this I would appreciate their comments before I 100% commit myself to recoding.

Regards

Dotty

[Bilzo]

AFAIK you're right, Google does not consider _ to be a word separator. Some Windows programs do this too...

For example:

Try typing test_test and test-test into the code view in Dreamweaver.
Double click the first 'test' in each case and you'll notice that with the - only the first 4 characters are selected, with the _ the entire 9 characters are treated as a single string and selected together.

For SEO purposes make sure you use - to separate keywords.

Bill

[Top Hat]

Q What about   is that considered a word separator?

[SteveGibson]

Bill's right.

If you had a page called "monkey_donkey.html", google wouldn't pick out the words "monkey" or "donkey" from "monkey_donkey".

However, if you had "monkey-donkey.html", google would recognise the 2 individual words.

So, if you wanted to rank high for "monkey" and "donkey", the hyphen would be better for SEO purposes (and the underscore would be useless - as would "monkeydonkey.html").

Steve

[DuaneJackson]

Q What about   is that considered a word separator?

I assume you mean in content as opposed the URLs? : )

Yes, it would/does,   is a valid html entity, althogh a space would always be preferable in SEO terms so as to keep your code:text ratio as good as possible.

[Stationery-Direct]

So from what you are sayin this page of mine:
http://www.stationery-direct.co.uk/BusinessCards.html

Should really be
http://www.stationery-direct.co.uk/Business-Cards.html

Have I got this right and do you think it makes that much difference?

[DuaneJackson]

So from what you are sayin this page of mine:
http://www.stationery-direct.co.uk/BusinessCards.html

Should really be
http://www.stationery-direct.co.uk/Business-Cards.html

Have I got this right and do you think it makes that much difference?

Yep, that's right. As to how much difference it makes - it's just one of mnay elements. On it's own it might not make much difference.

[Bilzo]

Yep, that's right. As to how much difference it makes - it's just one of mnay elements. On it's own it might not make much difference.

Worth considering for new pages though IMO... This way you're increasing your chances of ranking for "stationery" rather than "stationerydirect"

Bill

[DotNetWebs]

Thanks for all your replies.

You learn something new every day on this forum.

I am just about to rewrite my rewriting code (If you know what I mean)

Regards

Dotty

[welshnoonoo]

I certainly wouldn't go renaming indexed pages (just in case anyone rushes off to do so!), but yes, in future I would always use a "-" rather than a "_".

To be honest, I am not convinced it does that much to help, but every little bit. Also if you throw a search phrase into google, you will find that it does actually recognise the phrase whether it has been separated or not.

For example: if you throw "wedding dress" into google, and look at the urls you will see that if a page is called "buyagorgeousweddingdress" it will highlight "wedding dress". Not sure that it has any relevance but just thought i'd point it out! ;)

[multilingual]

Dashes for definite.

Quote from Google:

"With underscores, Google’s programmer roots are showing. Lots of computer programming languages have stuff like _MAXINT, which may be different than MAXINT. So if you have a url like word1_word2, Google will only return that page if the user searches for word1_word2 (which almost never happens). If you have a url like word1-word2, that page can be returned for the searches word1, word2, and even “word1 word2″."

However, Wedding Planner has made the point that I wanted to raise. :)

With regards to putting words together in a URL without dashes, the answer lies in keeping the URL to a two-word combination. Google won't take a run on a three word query and see it as three words.

If you run a search on partsexchange, Google finds partsexchange.com and places it at the top. But as an alternate query offer, it asks 'Did you mean: parts exchange', it does not ask 'did you mean: part sex change' :redface:

Search whitewedding vs whiteweddingday, etc.

Three word combinations don't seem to trigger the 'Did you mean' alternative, which suggests that they can't resolve long combinations.

So without the dashes, you should keep to just two word combinations.

JB

[SteveGibson]

Three word combinations don't seem to trigger the 'Did you mean' alternative

Try:

(a) ned of the world

(b) nedoftheworld

and you'll find that both trigger a suggestion of "end of the world". So, a 4 word phrase can trigger google's suggestion.

Steve

[welshnoonoo]

Try:

(a) ned of the world

(b) nedoftheworld

and you'll find that both trigger a suggestion of "end of the world". So, a 4 word phrase can trigger google's suggestion.

Steve

Would Google treat it as a 4 word phrase as "of" and "the" are stop words?

[multilingual]

Steve,

When I run that query it brings 'did you mean: endoftheworld' as one long word; it does this because that 'word' is listed in google. (www.endoftheworld.com)

It does not seem to resolve the phrase into four separate words for me.

:)

JB

[Bilzo]

Would Google treat it as a 4 word phrase as "of" and "the" are stop words?

I think you're right there...

try endworlddebt and Google won't try to split it...

try theendoftheworld (technically 5 words) and it will!

[Bilzo]

JB - you posted that while I was typing...

You're right, endoftheworld does not split but theendoftheworld does so I guess it only does it when the term starts with a stop word.

[SteveGibson]

I stand corrected.

Steve

[DotNetWebs]

Dashes for definite.

Quote from Google:

"With underscores, Google’s programmer roots are showing. Lots of computer programming languages have stuff like _MAXINT, which may be different than MAXINT. So if you have a url like word1_word2, Google will only return that page if the user searches for word1_word2 (which almost never happens). If you have a url like word1-word2, that page can be returned for the searches word1, word2, and even “word1 word2″."


Thanks for that quote JB

I have tried to find the source of it as I always like to read SEO stuff for myself due to the fact that lots of it seems to be open to misinterpretation (I am not suggesting that you have misinterpreted it). The original source of the quote seems to be:

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/dashes-vs-underscores/

Its not quite as cut and dry as it could be. Reading through all the comments there are quite a few counter arguments as this original article dates back to 1999.

The strongest argument against it here:

http://12pointdesign.com/advice/dashes_vs_underscores.asp

IMO the underscore would be a much more logical separator. It is more readable but the main reason is that the hyphen is used grammatically and is also often used for domain names. There is a good example in the replies to the first link when someone talks about Catherine Zeta-Jones.

As an experiment I entered ‘horsham_forum’ into a Google search and it came up with zero results. If you do the same with MSN it separates the words and my Horsham Forum site is returned. If you enter ‘horsham-forum’ both MSN and Google separate the words and my site is returned.

So the dashes do appear to be more effective but there does seem to be some arguments against it. The most worrying one is that some claim if you have large directory type sites with all hyphenated URL’s you site could be associated as a ‘Spam’ site.

One other spanner in the works. This recommendation from Google Analytics actually suggests you replace blanks spaces in URL’s with underscores:

http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?answer=27231&query=underscore&topic=&type=

[Tin]

Hi Dotty

Google uses the hyphen as a word seperator, following example demonstrates this.

Do this search http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=blue_lagoon&meta=
look over to the right/top of the results and you'll see 1-10 of 206,000 (approx). Just to the right of 206,000 you'll see the 2 words "blue_lagoon" which have been pulled from the search query and bolded. If you look at the results from this search you'll notice that the only instances of the searched for words are both bolded and inclusive of the underscore. Google cannot parse two individual meaningful words from the search.

Do this search
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=blue-lagoon&btnG=Search&meta=
look to the right again and you'll see that something's changed. They're now blue, bolded, underlined and clickable. Google understands that they are 2 distinct words and provides a clickable link to which shows the definition of each word via Answers.com.

Looking into the search results from this search Google uses different mechanisms to conveniently highlight the searched for words, primarily exact match and also character matching where it's able to identify the words when they appear as one without a space or hyphen as in the domain name www.bluelagoon.com (http://www.bluelagoon.com)

On this page http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=blue-lagoon&hl=en&lr=&start=10&sa=N
(at the time I did the query) the Wikipedia result again shows instances of 'Blue Lagoon' being bolded with Blue_Lagoon examples non-bolded.

Google's suggestion to use underscores instead of white spaces is common sense and it stops you ending up with daft looking url's too.

Hope that helps.

[DotNetWebs]

Many Thanks Tin

The thing I don’t understand is why does Google suggest using an underscore to replace the white space and not a hyphen?

Surely, given the other examples you have shown, this will result in the individual words being concated?

The more I think about this the more I think that I will be better of sticking with the underscore for the application I have in mind. The URL’s will be dynamically generated from user content. There is a much higher chance that the user will enter a hyphen in the content. This could cause problems with the URL rewriting and would have the effect of making the user’s hyphen grammatically meaningless. I also think that the underscore looks more ‘human readable’.

From the Wikipedia example you have given that is the approach they have taken.

Plus, although it’s hard to believe, there is more than one search engine out there ;). It seems the other main players can separate the words from ‘underscored’ links.

Each dynamically generated page will have at least a Title and H1 tag using the target phrase (complete with spaces). This phrase will obviously appear in the content (with spaces) at least once. All internal links to the page will also contain the phrase (with spaces). Do you think, given the other problems it would raise, is there is any tangible benefit in using hyphens instead of underscores to link the words up in the URL?

What do you think?

Regards

Dotty

[dan_moore]

Over the last couple of years the consensus view I've found in the various forums is that hyphens are preferable to underscores in terms of getting your keywords recognised in URLs, as most have said.

So with new pages you add, it is worth considering.

However the actual impact on your page rankings that having these format urls relative to things such as the page title, h1, well-written focussed copy etc is quite low, so it's not really worth re-launching an entire site just to put hyphens in your URLs for example.

Cheers

Dan

[DotNetWebs]

Hi Dotty

Google uses the hyphen as a word seperator, following example demonstrates this.

Do this search http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=blue_lagoon&meta=
look over to the right/top of the results and you'll see 1-10 of 206,000 (approx). Just to the right of 206,000 you'll see the 2 words "blue_lagoon" which have been pulled from the search query and bolded. If you look at the results from this search you'll notice that the only instances of the searched for words are both bolded and inclusive of the underscore. Google cannot parse two individual meaningful words from the search

<snip>



Just revisiting this thread because we are about to launch the site in question and still haven’t decided on the form of the URL rewrite.

My personal preference is to use underscores. I understand what you are saying, that Google cannot parse two individual meaningful words from a search that contains an underscore but that to me appears irrelevant because nobody is going to enter a search term with two (or more) words separated by underscores as in the example above.

What is more important is the question “can Google parse individual words from a URL that are separated by an underscore?” From the evidence I have seen the answer is yes. For example if you currently Google “fridges” (http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=fridges&btnG=Search&meta=) the no 1 result is this:

//householdappliances.kelkoo.co.uk/b/a/c_146401_fridges.html with the term “fridges” highlighted in bold.

This would suggest to me that the term “fridges” in the URL has played a part in the ranking.

I am not saying I am definitely right I just wanted to invite a few more comments before we make our decision.

Regards

Dotty

[DuaneJackson]

Another of the results is www.electricshop.com/icat/fridgesfs1 (http://www.electricshop.com/icat/fridgesfs1)

With the fridges part bolded, despite it being a substring of another word - "fridgesfs1" in this case. So I don't think the keyword being in the URL of the first result is a major factor in its positioning.

I don't see how Tins example is irrelevent. It clearly shows that on Planet G, 'white_fridge' != 'white fridge',

[DotNetWebs]

Hi Duane

Tins' example does indeed prove that if you enter "White_Fridge" into the Google search box it will give different results to if you enter "White Fridge". This makes sense because somebody might want to enter a file name (for instance) that contains an underscore.

What the example does not prove to me is that Google will give any extra weighting to a URL that contains the phrase "White-Fridge" over a URL that contains the phrase "White_Fridge" or indeed "WhiteFridge" In each case Google appears to be capable of extracting the word "fridge".

Think about what you would do if you were writing the algorithm to do this. I am effectively doing a similar thing in reverse by writing the URL rewrite code. It's a two way process, there are at least two different routines involved, just because one is doing it one way it does not mean the other is doing it that way as well.

I didn't mean Tins' example was irrelevant per se. I meant it appears irrelevant to my URL rewrite decision. I mean no disrespect to Tin. I know he is far more up to date about SEO than me. I am hoping he can clarify this for me further. The search engines are changing their algorithms all the time and I like to see hard, current, evidence for myself before I believe something related to SEO.

Obviously once my decision is made I have to stick with it. I want to be 100% sure before I commit myself.

Regards

Dotty

[DotNetWebs]

Here is a another example

fridge freezers (http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=fridge+freezers&btnG=Search&meta=)

The top result is:

//householdappliances.kelkoo.co.uk/b/a/c_145801_fridge_freezers.html

If you look at the words "fridge" and "freezers" in the URL they are highlighted in bold but the underscore between them is not.

A look at the source confirms this:

<span class=a>householdappliances.kelkoo.co.uk/<wbr>b/a/c_145801_<b>fridge</b>_<b>freezers</b>.html - 86k - </span>

This to me proves that Google is capable of extracting two individual words, separated by an underscore, from a URL and matching them to a two word search query.

Again I am not trying to prove anybody wrong and am happy to be proved wrong myself. I just want to be sure I am making the right decision.

Regards

Dotty

[jayweb]

Duane implies in another thread that Google ranks the hyphen character "-" above the underscore character "_" when used as a word separator e.g ./horsham-forum.aspx will rank higher (for the terms horsham and forum) than horsham_forum.asxp.


Whether or not google looks at an underscore as a word seperator is not really important. Google recognises keywords no matter what. The only time google counts keywords in your url towards any sort of "keyword score" is if the keywords are in the actual domain name, not the folder or file name. If google were to count words in the URL, it would be too easy for spammers to manipulate.

My new domain name which is too new to rank well in google for any good phrases ranks No1 for the search term - Jay Web Solutions - This is because the domain name is jaywebsolutions.co.uk, and i could give you hundreds more examples of how google can recognise keywords whether the word are seperated or not.

The fact is though, keywords in domain names are not anywhere near as important as ethical search engine optimisation or pagerank. So i would not worry too mauch at all whether you use - or _ . If you feel more comfortable using - , then use it, it wont make any noticeable difference.

My advice to you is to concentrate on Good titles and original content. Attract new inbound links to your content and stop worrying so much about how your url's are constructed. These days even if you use short query strings in your URL's you wont have a problem.

All this time worrying about URL's would be better spent writing great original content. :)

[SteveGibson]

ranks No1 for the search term - Jay Web Solutions - This is because the domain name is jaywebsolutions.co.uk

How do you know this?

It's a massively uncompetitive term and, in the cached version of your page, "Jay Web Solutions" is in the meta-title and also in the body text (at least 4 times).

So, even if your domain was yabadabbadoo.co.uk, that page would still be #1 on google for "Jay Web Solutions".

The only time google counts keywords in your url towards any sort of "keyword score" is if the keywords are in the actual domain name, not the folder or file name

I'm not sure I agree.

I searched for the term "index2" within my site and got:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&as_qdr=all&q=index2+site%3Awww.greaterprofitsguaranteed.com

So, that page comes up simply because "index2" is in the file name (doesn't appear anywhere else).

So, I'd say that it's getting some score from google. While I'd guess it's not very much, it is something, otherwise, it wouldn't come up.

Steve

[creospace]

This might sound a stupid question but do google not publish a set of guidelines? That would put a stop to all this wouldn't it?

If not (which i preseume is the case) do you think they should? Is there an advantage in not publishing this guide ? Do people think it's a good idea?

Just adding some wood to the fire

[jayweb]

I'm not saying that google doesnt recognise words in the url, it just doesnt seem to count them any more than it would page text, whereas words in the domain name definately seem to hold more weight.

Of course jay web solutions is uncompetetive, its my company name. However, I will dig out a few better examples and post them later today.

[DotNetWebs]

Hi Jay

Thanks for your input.

The only time google counts keywords in your url towards any sort of "keyword score" is if the keywords are in the actual domain name, not the folder or file name. If google were to count words in the URL, it would be too easy for spammers to manipulate.

I am not being funny but could you please give some examples of this. The evidence I have seen suggests otherwise. As with anything related to SEO I like to see hard evidence for something before I believe it. There are too many urban myths about. (I am not suggesting that this is).

I agree with you that titles, content and inbound links etc are more important so I am obviously not putting all my efforts into the URL's. Every page is dynamically created and would otherwise require some hefty query strings that would be semantically meaningless to search engines and the human reader. It makes sense to rewrite them anyway and if I am going to do that I may as well research and implement the best way of doing it.

Unfortunately, as with anything related to SEO, there is always differing opinions on what is the 'best way'. I think the only people who really know are the people who actually write the search engine algorithms. And even then I wouldn't mind betting very few of them have the entire picture.

Regards

Dotty

[DotNetWebs]

I will dig out a few better examples and post them later today.

Thanks. I just read this after making my last post.

[DotNetWebs]

This might sound a stupid question but do google not publish a set of guidelines? That would put a stop to all this wouldn't it?

If not (which i preseume is the case) do you think they should? Is there an advantage in not publishing this guide ? Do people think it's a good idea?

Just adding some wood to the fire


If there is a guide I wish somebody would point me to it! It would save a lot of confusion :|

[Bilzo]

Google will never publish exact details of what does/doesn't affect their rankings and in what way, since that would give potential competitors (and spammers) the details of their algorithm. Google simply say write quality content and stick to the guidelines!

Google is fighting a constant battle to try and serve up the most relevant results pages, while everyone else trys to influence those results for their own benefit. Much of the talk about SEO best practices is therefore speculation and evidence gained from previous results since nobody outside of Google really knows exactly what affects the rankings by how much.

Bill

[DotNetWebs]

Google is fighting a constant battle to try and serve up the most relevant results pages, while everyone else trys to influence those results for their own benefit. Much of the talk about SEO best practices is therefore speculation and evidence gained from previous results since nobody outside of Google really knows exactly what affects the rankings by how much.
Bill

It's a battle I would say they are loosing. My preferred search engine is MSN as I think the results are far more relevenant.

Anyway I have decided to go with the underscores. Thanks everybody for you input.

Regards

Dotty

[creospace]

Anyway I have decided to go with the underscores. Thanks everybody for you input.

It's strange becasue this week I've decided to actively go with and use dashes.

[DotNetWebs]

It's strange becasue this week I've decided to actively go with and use dashes.

Good luck. Perhaps, as an experiment, we should have made competing sites and come back in 6 months and compared rankings ;)

I don't really expect to find an answer to this. It could change any time anyway. The main reason for my decision is that underscores (to me) are easier on the eye.. It will also allow my users to input hyphenated names that will retain their meaning when they are converted to URL's (a user is far less likely to want to use an underscore in this application)

[DotNetWebs]

ps going off on a slight tangent. I had some interesting results with dynamically rewritten URLs' that (accidentally) contained an ampersand (&) that was not used as part of a query string. It seems you can get away with it in IIS 5 but not IIS 6. Out of interest does anybody know what would happen if you tried this with Apache etc.

[DuaneJackson]

it would be non-compliant to have an unencoded ampersand in the URL if it's not part of the querystring.

Good luck with the underscores, I think it's the wrong decision though! Personally (no hard proof) I think undersocres aren't trated as a whitespace charcter and this isn't likley to change anytime soon as it wasn't done by design at google, it was an accident of coding due to the fact that underscores are often used in variable names

[jayweb]

It would be hard to show you examples of this, I would have a hard time showing you hard evidence. It is my finding after years of optimising websites and running various tests. URL's is something we tested over two years ago and since then things have changed and we don't worry too much about how a URL is constructed. How a site is constructed and anchor text is the main thing we test and work on at the moment.

You pretty much hit the nail on the head when you said...

Unfortunately, as with anything related to SEO, there is always differing opinions on what is the 'best way'. I think the only people who really know are the people who actually write the search engine algorithms. And even then I wouldn't mind betting very few of them have the entire picture.


I belong to the school of thought where search engine optimisation should be about testing, and testing, and testing, and a bit of reading. You can only learn so much from other people. You will only find opinions, not facts, because as you say, only the search engines really know whats going on.

[Tin]

Hi Dotty

Have to agree with Duane, it's the wrong decision from an seo point of view but then you've stated, that the main reason you're going to use underscores is because they're easier on the eye so this kind of makes the point of the thread useless. I thought it was quite clear from my "blue lagoon" example that Google doesn't understand the two words either side of an underscore whereas it does understand the words either side of a hyphen and this is demonstrated by Google offering a definition of each word when a hyphen is used as a word seperator. There are also benefits using hyphenated file names where deep linking techniques are deployed across a site which can be watered down if file names are underscored. Seo is about working on margins all the time and I just don't see the point of tossing aside any consideration no matter how small it seems if it's likely to be of benefit.

Ray

[DotNetWebs]

Many thanks for all the other replies.

Tin I wouldn't say the point of the thread has been useless. I have learnt a lot from it and I am sure others have too. I appreciate your help. My decision to use underscores is not just because (for me) they are easier on the eye. The main reason is a purely practical one. The application is at its most basic form a Town Centre Shoppers Guide. It allows a Town Centre Manager to add retail businesses to the guide. The retailers can then edit their own pages themselves. 99% of the pages in the guide are generated dynamically based on locations, categories, brands, products and business names entered by the manager or the retailers.

The main reason that I don't want to use hyphens is that it will effectively prevent users from inputting data containing hyphens. For instance the Non-Stop Party Shop has already entered their business name in that form. That currently rewrites to /Non-Stop_Party_Shop.aspx and the original name can be recovered from that URL. (an important point because this effectively becomes the query string) It doesn't work with /Non-Stop-Party-Shop.aspx.

Incidentally your "Blue Lagoon" example did make sense to me but as I stated in this thread I thought that was looking at the problem the wrong way round as nobody would enter a search term with a hyphen/underscore in lieu of a space. I have tried your example in reverse and have proved what you say the "other way round". If you enter "Blue Lagoon" (complete with quotes) the URL's with the hyphens are returned like this <b>Blue-Lagoon</b> i.e the words and the hyphen are bolded. In the URL's with the underscore neither the words nor the underscore are bolded.

This does confirm to me that if you want to search for a literal space (i.e. by enclosing spaced words with quotes) hyphenated URL's will have an advantage over underscored URL's. Most people however tend to search without quotes and in this case, in both types of URL the individual words are picked out in bold and the connecting symbol is ignored. This therefore does not prove to me that for (non quoted) searches my underscored URL's will be at a disadvantage to the hyphenated URL's.

So the bottom line is. For me the disadvantages of using hyphenated URL's outweigh any possible advantages. This won't apply to everybody of course but it does to me (plus I think underscores look nicer ;) ).

Thanks again for all your comments.

Regards

Dotty

[Tin]

No probs Dotty and good luck with your project:)

[SteveGibson]

I think underscores look nicer

Me, too. Far more readable.

It's a pity google doesn't treat them well as I'd start using them again.

Steve

[DotNetWebs]

I thought after all this discussion I ought to show you the site in question.

www.visithorsham.com

It still has a bit of design and development work outstanding but we have decided to launch it now to meet the demands of the Christmas Shopping period. .

The entire site structure is built dynamically from the data entered by a Town Centre Manger and participating retailers. All of the sectors, zones, locations, maps and businesses have dynamically rewritten links based on the data entered. This application can (and will) be used in other Towns and shopping centres. The colour schemes used are also generated dynamically based on the mangers choices. When it is set up for a new town the only changes required are a new map and logo etc.

Anyway this is the link that made me decide to use underscores.

http://www.visithorsham.co.uk/location/Middle_Street/Business/Non-Stop_Party_shop.aspx

The retailer entered their name with a hyphen in it. If I had used hyphenated links I would have had to make the hyphen an invalid character for user inputs.

Incidentally if you have not seen the Microsoft Virtual Earth before check out the Virtual Horsham page. Its similar to Google Earth but for many areas (including Horsham) the photographs tend to be a lot higher resolution (if dated). Horsham is OK but if you scroll down to Brighton it is even sharper.

The only problem I have with it for some reason the push pins aren't showing in Firefox 2.0 (It is fine in 1.5.)

If any Firefox 2.0 users can see a pin with a rollover pop-up on this page please let me know:

Regards

http://www.visithorsham.co.uk/map/Carfax.aspx

Dotty

[DotNetWebs]

Just in case there are any other Virtual Earth developers on here I have found the answer to the Firefox 2.0 problem on MSDN:

http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=852512&SiteID=1

I will try the suggested fix tomorrow. (Right now I have a glass of Shiraz waiting for me :) )

[DuaneJackson]

Matt Cutts agrees with me!
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/dashes-vs-underscores/

[multilingual]

Matt Cutts agrees with me!
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/dashes-vs-underscores/

Duane,

I quoted from that blog back on page 2 ;)

JB

[DuaneJackson]

Sorry, it was late : /

[multilingual]

Sorry, it was late : /

3.15 in the morning is so late, it's early!

What were you doing online at that time?

JB

[DotNetWebs]

Duane,

I quoted from that blog back on page 2 ;)

JB

lol. And I Googled your quote and pasted that exact link on the same page :)

But thanks Duane for reviving this thread.

Incidentally I had some unexpected very good early rankings on this site. Unfortunately some of the pages I was most pleased with have now been demoted to "Supplemental Pages". I am guessing it is because they are deemed to be 'duplicate content' as some of the pages can effectively be reached by 3 different URL's. The annoying thing is that in some cases Google has demoted one of the pages before indexing the other 2. I am not to bothered at the moment as it has only been live a couple of weeks and every day brings different results from Google. :|

[DuaneJackson]

3.15 in the morning is so late, it's early!

What were you doing online at that time?

JB

I often am - along with Jon at Handson and CSN-Carl, we're night owls.

For some reason I find it almost impossible to get to sleep before 3am.

[Scott-CopyandDesign]

I'm exactly the same. I very rarely go to sleep before 3am unless I'm very tired or I have something to do the following day.

[multilingual]

I'm exactly the same. I very rarely go to sleep before 3am unless I'm very tired or I have something to do the following day.

Does that mean that you rarely have anything to do each day?

;)

JB

[Scott-CopyandDesign]

Does that mean that you rarely have anything to do each day?

;)

JB

Yup :p

It's the christmas hols, time to relax and do bugger all in my opinion.

[contractfreelancers]

Wow. Did not know that... I shall have to update pronto LOL :P

All my sep pages have "_" lol

Aye ya do learn something new every day.

[DotNetWebs]

I am just reviving this old thread to add this new APPARENT piece of information:

Hyphens & Underscores Are Now Treated Equally in Google.com (http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/014260.html)

Regards

Dotty

[moneybackmadness]

Thanks for the update Dotty...I started reading this thread and was very alarmed, I'd recently recreated around a 1000 pages to have "_" instead of "-".....I was thinking I'd have to recreat them all again until I saw your post! :)

Cheers,
Steve

[DotNetWebs]

Hi Steve

I am glad this has put your mind at rest. I remain convinced that under the circumstances using underscores was the right thing to do for my Visit Horsham (http://www.visithorsham.co.uk) site so I don't think you would have had a big problem anyway.

IMO underscores are far easier on the eye and look less 'spammy'. The biggest disadvantage for me is that you cannot easily create dynamic URL's from phrases that contain existing hyphens.

Still it's nice to know that underscores and hyphens are now supposedly treated as equals in the eyes of Google. In every case it will be underscores for me from now on!!

Regards

Dotty