Hyphen vs underscore url downloader

Theyre great for human readability, but theyre remarkably inconvenient in computer resource locators. A sites url structure should be as simple as possible. They seem to be treated as a space where an underscore is not. I used to think the choice of using dashes vs underscores to separate words in an url was simply a matter of personal preference. Googles support article on seo discusses the use logical. The hyphen is still better, as i see it, but by a slim margin. So much so i had originally made that the default url scheme in subtext for friendly urls. Check out his webmaster hangout for the full explanation. Id add as part of the guess that programmers use the dash as subtraction so underscore is used. Hyphens are short little lines used to connect two or more words that work together as a. I was talking with someone recently who thought that no matter how long the url is, keep it hyphen or underscore free. Although urls can include id numbers and codes, the best practice is to use words that. I am optimizing a website that has underscores in url.

Which keyword separator is better in url dash or underscore. 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. All the shopping carts have a friendly url structure, for e. Most business owners are not sure which way to go, here are some guidelines to help. For example, if youre searching for information about aviation, a url like. Spaces inside of a url or a linked file basically generate a faulty. Urls should not use underscores, spaces, or any other characters to separate words.

Complete url optimization details can be found here. It would be great if the standards document expressed a clear opinion on how multiple words should be concatenated in url path segments. This is a small, tiny, miniscule thing, but often the game is won in the trenches of minutia. Im only talking about audio files, wav samples, kontakt instruments, etc. Google has traditionally considered the underscore as a true character and not a separator. Is there any reason why forward slash should be used instead of hyphen. A user would like to download a directory of files to their desktop. Underscore in url gets escaped to %5f and does not work. In all actuallity the url is given little weight in the search engine algo. I imagine this is due to being able to reconstitute this back from url rewriting so they know the difference between a dash in the url that replaces a space vs a which would reconstitute back to a dash. Im trying to use an underscore in a link in my answers at stackoverlow. When a search engine looks at a url for keywords, unlike hyphens between words, underscores are not treated as spaces that separate keywords. Google views hyphens in urls as word separators while an underscore in your url will not be recognized.

I was an underscore guy until just a couple of months ago. 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. Also, the only uppercase letters i care to have in my code are commented section titles. What you have to remember, though, is that the filename is part of the direct url to that image. The hyphenunderscore translation works only if youre running the new router. Link with underscore does not work meta stack exchange. Is it better to use underscores or dashes in a url. At the same time, some other shopping carts dont have such structure, for e. Google views hyphens in urls as word separators while an underscore in your url will not be. How to delete hyphen and underscore from url string in nginx. Will urldashes, minus or hyphen affect ranking in search results.

As of 2012, dashes are still the best way to optimize your seo urls. 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. They seem to only make sense at the end of a url to separate words in the title of an article. I made a booboo recently and ended up with space characters in a huge number or urls, they. No real aesthetic reason, just a matter of efficiency.

However, the link does not work in the resulting html. The link that you provided explains how to structure url if you have hierarchy of entities. Use hyphens to separate the words in url instead of using other symbols such as underscores. As verbs the difference between underscore and dash is that underscore is to underline. An underscore, on the other hand, is considered a word joiner. But if you use a mouse or trackpad for computing, the hyphen is a gamechanger. Sharepoint found the word with a space in the url, even if there was a space or underscore. Since so many people have complained about it, i will in this description show you the difference between a hyphen and an underscore. Hyphens and underscores in file names dan madden medium. Discussion in search engine optimization started by rahul pandit, aug 27, 2014. At the same time, some other shopping carts dont have such structure e. One hint might be found in perl regular expressions. Do a search for underscore and it will show lots of results.

Wed like to clarify the things that matter when making a choice so you can avoid making a bad decision. 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. As evident, a layman cannot recognize the underscore used in the second url. I often get asked whether id recommend dashes or underscores for words in urls.

You dont want address bars to scroll horizontally or url only links to linewrap. It emphasizes the page name with capitalization, and the underscore seems like a clearer and more intuitive worddelimiter than the hyphen. However, dealing with underscore and hypens is still complicated. I dont agree, and have been doing underscores, but i think i will do hyphens now. From implementation point of view there is not so much difference. A filename with spaces has to be surrounded by quotes when referenced at the command line.

What should be preferred in urls dash or underscore. Web browsers can deal with it fine in most circumstances. Seo benefits of using hyphensdashes over underscores. Either way it makes the url less of a headache to read if itissuperlong dot com. When you double click windows highlights that part of the name only which is more expediant than a clickdrag. Most agree that hyphens or underscores are the best punctuation to use in urls. 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. Straight from the horses mouth dash not underscore. All the shopping carts have a friendly urlstrtucure e. 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. Matt quickly corrected this perception on his blog, but the belief persisted.

If youre displaying a full url as a link, underscores become a huge usability problem. When necessary for readability, use hyphens to separate words. In fact, john mueller explicitly advises against redirecting urls just to resolve the underscore vs. I use underscore because its easy to read low visual profile and its easy to rename specific components i. I just tried the same site in firefox and clicking on the navigation link for forms and support shows this url in. Dashes will tend to work with word wrapping when they need to, in a logical place, whereas if you use underscores. Using a hyphen is one less keystroke than underscore or camel case no shift necessary. Then you should know the difference between dash and underscore in seo. 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.