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Do Dashes or
Underscores Goose Google Rankings More?
Author: John Gergye
Email:
john@traffic-test-tube.com
Domain Name Dilemma: Do Dashes or Underscores Goose
Google Rankings
More?
Copyright 2004 John Gergye
The debate rages.
Some swear dashes in domain names send rankings
soaring.
Some have an ongoing love affair with underscores.
Others are sure there is no difference.
While I agree you do get a bit of a bounce in Google
if you
do this right - it’s only marginal.
Still let’s end this debate once and for all and
PROVE
which is better. Using Google search results (SERPS)
to
test if Google treats dashes or underscores the same
or
differently.
The guinea pig multi-word search term I picked is
"affordable search engine placement".
To set a benchmark I first cast the broadest net
possible
doing a search using affordable search engine
placement
Google returned this:
Searched the web for affordable search engine
placement.
Results 1 - 10 of about 78,600
That says 78,600 pages were indexed by Google for
ANY of
those keywords.
Next I searched on the same phrase only this time I
separated the words by dashes like this:
affordable-search-engine-placement
Google turned up these results: Searched the web for
affordable-search-engine-placement.
Results 1 - 10 of about 1,160.
As you can see our term with dashes gave
considerably fewer
results than the one without.
Then I searched on the same words separated by
underscores:
affordable_search_engine_placement
For this one Google didn’t find much: Searched the
web for affordable_search_engine_placement.
Results 1 - 4 of about 6.
Finally I searched for "affordable search engine
placement"
Note the quotes. Using quotes limits the search
results to
one specific phrase.
In this case Google returned: Searched the web for
"affordable search engine
placement".
Results 1 - 10 of about 1,160.
If that looks familiar it’s exactly the same number
of
pages as the keyword phrase with dashes returned.
Okay so what have we got?
The first search returns what you could say is a
free for
all of listings with any of the words in the keyword
phrase. That’s why there are so many search
results.
Next the phrase with underscores produced negligible
results. As in next to none.
While the keyword phrase with dashes and the exact
phrase
search turned up the same number of SERPs.
At this point you should be wondering "Why is that?" |
|
Glad you asked. Even if you didn’t let me explain.
The reason for this apparent match of search results is
Google uses the dash to separate the words in the phrase.
Programmers call this a "delimiter". In essence Google
sees the dash as a separator between the words.
Yet Google obviously does NOT treat the underscore as a
delimiter. To Google it’s just another character. Which
is proven by the search results. Since if Google treated
the dash and underscore alike the number of SERPs returned
for
affordable_search_engine_placement
or
affordable-search-engine-placement
would be identical. But as you saw they are not. Not even
close.
So the answer as to which is better, dashes or underscores,
is obvious now isn’t it? You want to use dashes in your
domain names, folder names, files names etc.
That’s because using dashes to separate the words will give
you the biggest Google impact - whatever that impact may
be. Since Google can parse the different words. While
underscores don’t help one iota.
Look. This isn’t theory or speculation. It’s fact. And
you can repeat the same searches with any keyword phrase
you want and you’ll get the same results.
Yet to keep this real don’t expect some kind of massive
boost from this dash trick. Sure it can help a tad as part
of an over all optimization scheme. But whether or not you
use dashes in a domain, folder or file name is not going to
be what gets you top Google listings. Content and links
are.
Still this study does settle the debate about dashes and
underscores. Giving you yet another little thing you can
do to rank well.
About the Author:
John Gergye shares more ideas like this in his just updated
eBook "Traffic From Google in 35 Days". Find out more
here:
http://www.traffic-test-tube.com/j/tfg35cl.shtml
Or test your search engine IQ by taking his seo quiz
http://www.traffic-test-tube.com/search-engine-quiz.shtml
and get the free special report "Coming Out On Top".
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