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by: Anne Haynes and Twitter SEO Experts

Too many times I’ve seen SEO firms that use underscores or hyphens when constructing websites. So I sent a question to my Twitter network and following is what I received. It seems that us SEOers are all over the map on what works and what doesn’t. When I worked at SEOINC in San Diego, CA I was raised to use hyphens and not underscores. During the early SEO years the hyphen was considered a word separator when programming websites for Google.

In that last few years I’ve noticed the underscore has made a come back. My hat is off to @adamlevenson for finding this pretty SEO article from Matt Cutts on July 23rd 2007, but notice Twitter friend SEM_SEO states if you have underscores don’t go changing (heehee his name has an underscore).

In the CNET article Matt Cutts states that Google’s algorithm is referencing underscores as word separators. Which from a development perspective is developer friendly. I like that Matt Cutts is one of the experts in the SEO industry, but I know there are deep seeded constraints for an internal employee of Google to declare anything from a broadcast level. From a non biased SEOer perspective, it’s about testing and documenting results.

I’d like to see a study on this subject since Matt announced this algorithm enhancement in 2007. It’s been a year since his declaration and well, there have been multiple updates since this announcement. Any takers? Aaron Wall where are you?

Many thanks to the following friends that have helped me navigate through my question!

sem_seo: @AnneHaynes In the last Google webmaster chat they suggested if you have existing underscores don’t change, but going forward use hyphens. (about 6 hours ago)

kevinthompson: @AnneHaynes That used to be the case, but it seems most search engines now interpret both as spaces. I still use hyphens just to be safe. (about 9 hours ago)

adamlevenson: @AnneHaynes Yeah, check this out: News.CNET from AdamLevenson (about 9 hours ago)

gregspradlin: @AnneHaynes Hi Anne, I’ve been told that if given the choice, go with hypens over underscores. (about 9 hours ago)