Hi folks, Jason Katzenback of Portal Feeder and Jerry West (the ultimate tester himself) have provided Theme Zoom members with the real skinny about using underscores versus dashes in a URL: Hi Russell, 1. Google treats underscored phrases as one word - Yes 2. Google treats dashed phrases as multiple words - Yes The quick answer is "Don't use underscores" - it goes deeper than treating it as one word - you actually have to put in the underscores in the search to find the site. Of course, it needs to be understood that keywords in the filename are not as effective as they have been in the past but here is a basic example that will explain the issue: If these were real URLs… http://www.domain.com/cheap-widgets-california.html http://www.domain.com/cheap_widgets_california.html …and if you perform a search for cheap widgets california the first URL will display. To get the second URL to display, you need to search for cheap_widgets_california (note the underscores). Doing a search for cheapwidgetscalifornia will NOT bring up the second URL. This is why using underscores is negative in the SEO space, but it needs to be realized that the keyword in the URL has little impact in the "money phrase" arena. Therefore it is preferred not to use underscores because you won't get the "juice" of the keyword in the filename, but that is such a low point in the algorithm with Google, I would leave things as they are and move forward with using dashes. You could fix an entire site from underscores to dashes with redirects and you may not see any movement in the SERPs for your keywords. Don't sweat it - just move forward. PS - here is what Matt says… http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/dashes-vs-underscores/

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