Should I replace underscores in page file names with hyphens?
-
Many of the 1000s of pages at our Web store that were established several years ago but still relevant today have underscores separating words in page file names. For example: http://www.audiobooksonline.com/whats_new_compact_disc_audiobooks_audio_books.html
Should I replace the underscores with hyphens like this:
http://www.audiobooksonline.com/whats-new-compact-disc-audiobooks-audio-books.html
or should I duplicate pages with underscores using hyphens and have the older pages with underscores 304 re-directed to the new pages with hyphens?
-
No worries. And, I agree with you on the drawbacks. I know I've made changes like this before and caused more problems than I think I had in the first place
-
Shoot, I just realized I linked to the same video. Thumbs up for that.
-
Hi Larry,
Truth be told - I would leave them alone.
It's true that Google treats underscores differently than dashes - or at least they did as recently as 2011. In this Webmaster Video, Matt Cutts explains that underscores act as a "joiner" - joining the two words together.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=AQcSFsQyct8
But he also states that it's a minor effect, that's it's not worth changing if you don't have to.
I happen to agree with Matt on this. Changing your urls and/or redirecting them usually doesn't cause much problems, but in certain cases it can have a negative effect on your SEO, resulting in a loss of traffic and rankings. We generally advise folks not to change your URLs unless you have to - and in this case you don't have to.
CAVEAT: The only situation I would actually advise you to make this change is if you were overhauling your website/CMS and had to change your URL structure anyway. In this situation it would make sense, and you would want to redirect the old URLs via 301 to the new structure.
Hope this helps! Best of luck with your SEO.
-
Check out the attached video.
If it were me, I would look at the link profile of the pages that could potentially change and, assuming I didn't find something that told me to just keep it as is, I'd make the change and then 301 all of the underscored URLs to the rewritten URLs.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Can a duplicate page referencing the original page on another domain in another country using the 'canonical link' still get indexed locally?
Hi I wonder if anyone could help me on a canonical link query/indexing issue. I have given an overview, intended solution and question below. Any advice on this query will be much appreciated. Overview: I have a client who has a .com domain that includes blog content intended for the US market using the correct lang tags. The client also has a .co.uk site without a blog but looking at creating one. As the target keywords and content are relevant across both UK and US markets and not to duplicate work the client has asked would it be worthwhile centralising the blog or provide any other efficient blog site structure recommendations. Suggested solution: As the domain authority (DA) on the .com/.co.uk sites are in the 60+ it would risky moving domains/subdomain at this stage and would be a waste not to utilise the DAs that have built up on both sites. I have suggested they keep both sites and share the same content between them using a content curated WP plugin and using the 'canonical link' to reference the original source (US or UK) - so not to get duplicate content issues. My question: Let's say I'm a potential customer in the UK and i'm searching using a keyword phrase that the content that answers my query is on both the UK and US site although the US content is the original source.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JonRayner
Will the US or UK version blog appear in UK SERPs? My gut is the UK blog will as Google will try and serve me the most appropriate version of the content and as I'm in the UK it will be this version, even though I have identified the US source using the canonical link?2 -
Weight of content further down a page
Hi, A client is trying to justify a design decision by saying he needs all the links for all his sub pages on the top level category page as google won't index them; however the links are available on the sub category and the sub category is linked to from the top level page so I have argued as long as google can crawl the links through the pages they will be indexed and won't be penalised. Am I correct? Additionally the client has said those links need to be towards the top of the page as content further down the page carries less weight; I don't believe this is the case but can you confirm? Thanks again, Craig.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CSIMedia1 -
Too many on page links
Hi I know previously it was recommended to stick to under 100 links on the page, but I've run a crawl and mine are over this now with 130+ How important is this now? I've read a few articles to say it's not as crucial as before. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey1 -
301 Externally Linked, But Non-Producing Pages, To Productive Pages Needing Links?
I'm working on a site that has some non-productive pages without much of an upside potential, but that are linked-to externally. The site also has some productive pages, light in external links, in a somewhat related topic. What do you think of 301ing the non-productive pages with links to the productive pages without links in order to give them more external link love? Would it make much of a difference? Thanks... Darcy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
Should we show(to google) different city pages on our website which look like home page as one page or different? If yes then how?
On our website, we show events from different cities. We have made different URL's for each city like www.townscript.com/mumbai, www.townscript.com/delhi. But the page of all the cities looks similar, only the events change on those different city pages. Even our home URL www.townscript.com, shows the visitor the city which he visited last time on our website(initially we show everyone Mumbai, visitor needs to choose his city then) For every page visit, we save the last visited page of a particular IP address and next time when he visits our website www.townscript.com, we show him that city only which he visited last time. Now, we feel as the content of home page, and city pages is similar. Should we show these pages as one page i.e. Townscript.com to Google? Can we do that by rel="canonical" ? Please help me! As I think all of these pages are competing with each other.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sanchitmalik0 -
Is it OK to Delete a Page and Move Content to a Another Page without 301 re-direct
I have a page "A" that I want to completely delete and move the written content from A" to page "B". Since I am deleting "A" (not keeping page) is it OK to upload the content from "A" to page "B" and search engines will give "B" credit for the unique content? Or, since the content has already once been indexed on "A", "B" may struggle to get full credit for this new unique content, even though page "A" is deleted?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | khi50 -
Content per page?
We used to have an articles worth of content in a scroll box created by our previous SEO, the problem was that it was very much keyword stuffed, link stuffed and complete crap. We then removed this and added more content above the fold, the problem I have is that we are only able to add 150 - 250 words above the fold and a bit of that is repetition across the pages. Would we benefit from putting an article at the bottom of each of our product pages, and when I say article I mean high quality in depth content that will go into a lot more detail about the product, history and more. Would this help our SEO (give the page more uniqueness and authority rather than 200 - 250 word pages). If I could see one problem it would be would an articles worth of content be ok at the bottom of the page and at that in a div tab or scroll box.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobAnderson0 -
Product pages content
Hi! I'm doing some SEO work for a new client. I've been tasked with boosting some of their products, such as http://www.lawnmowersdirect.co.uk/product/self-propelled-rear-roller-rotary-petrol-lawnmowers/honda-hrx426qx. It's currently #48 for the term Honda Izy HRG465SD, while http://www.justlawnmowers.co.uk/lawnmowers/honda-izy-hrg-465-sd.htm is #2, behind Amazon. Regarding links, there's no great shakes between the pages or even the domains. However, there's major difference in content. I'm happy to completely revamp it, I just wanted to check I'm not missing anything out before starting to rewrite it altogether! Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | neooptic0