Is it worth switching from underscores to hyphens in the URL?
-
I work for a website that recently did a redesign, and switched from hyphens to underscores. We have seen some drop in traffic, although that may be attributed to the migration.
I have read that while Google prefers hyphens, the underscore problem is not as much of an issue as it used to be.
Is it worth 301'ing the page to a version of itself with hyphens instead of underscores in the URL?
-
Darren is absolutely right. However, it seems unclear as to whether or not you set up 301-redirects from your old URLs to your new URLs. If you did, then the drop should only be temporary as Google figures out where the new URLs are and the old authority is passed to the new pages (or at least most of it). If you didn't do any 301-redirects, and you still have access to a spreadsheet or sitemap of your old URLs I'd encourage you to set up 301 redirects as soon as possible. Otherwise, it will indeed be like starting completely over with a new site, regardless of hyphens or underscores.
-
The drop in traffic isn't because Google prefers hyphens, it's because all your page URLs changed. You had a bunch of web pages that Google knew about, were in its index, and now they're gone. You now have a bunch of new pages that have to start building trust and authority from scratch.
I'd change them back to dashes, then set up 301 redirects for all the underscore versions.
-
Sorry, let me clarify. By used to I mean before the domain was migrated over. So it was hyphens on the old site, but was changed to underscores on the new site.
-
Hyphens vs underscores doesn't make a difference any more. If you're purely thinking of making the change for SEO purposes, I wouldn't do it. I agree that the drop in traffic you are seeing has more to do with replatforming and rewriting all of your URLs. This is pretty normal. Hope that helps!
-
You said it used to be hyphens and then was changed to underscores. if this was done recently then change it back and don't bother 301'ing unless you got a decent amount of links in that time period. i am assuming you 301'd the hyphens to the underscores, if so you need to undo that was well.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
What to do with dynamically translated content sharing same urls?
We've just added to an originally English website, Italian and German translations. User can switch between them with right hand drop down language selection menu; then the entire page will be translated (including menu, body, footer) but the urls remain the same. The Italian page have some meta data (titles and descriptions) translated as well. Is it going to be a significantly negative effect on SEO to have the translated pages sharing the same urls?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | D2i0 -
Consolidate URLs on Wordpress?
Hi Guys, On a WordPress site, we are working with currently has multiple different versions of each URL per page. See screenshot: https://d.pr/i/ZC8bZt Data example: https://tinyurl.com/y8suzh6c Right now the non-https version redirects to the equivalent https versions while some of the https versions don't redirect and are status code 200. We all want all of them to redirect to the highlighted blue version (row a).Is this easily doable in wordpress and how would one go about it? Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wickstar1 -
¿Disallow duplicate URL?
Hi comunity, thanks for answering my question. I have a problem with a website. My website is: http://example.examples.com/brand/brand1 (good URL) but i have 2 filters to show something and this generate 2 URL's more: http://example.examples.com/brand/brand1?show=true (if we put 1 filter) http://example.examples.com/brand/brand1?show=false (if we put other filter) My question is, should i put in robots.txt disallow for these filters like this: **Disallow: /*?show=***
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | thekiller990 -
Is it best to have products and reviews on the same URL?
Hi Moz, Is it better to have products and reviews on the same or different URLs? I suspect that combining these into one page will help with rankings overall even though some ranking for product review terms may suffer. This is for a hair products company with tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of reviews. Thanks for reading!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DA20130 -
Preserving URL Structure from Os Commerce to Magento
I have a website that is built on OS Commerce and I am planning to transition to Magento. I was told that the transition to Magento would change my url structure. How do I preserve my current url structure while migrating to the Magento platform so that I do not lose my backlink profile.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WebServiceConsulting.com0 -
301 Redirection and apostrophes in URLs
Hi I am experiencing trouble getting any redirects with apostrophes in the URLs to 301 redirect in order to eliminate 404 errors. I have tried replacing the instance of the apostrophe in the source URL field to %27 and variations of this but to no avail. The site is a wordpress site (the old URLS are legacies from the old Business Catalyst site) and I am using the redirection plug in. I have gone into some detail with a helpful soul here http://wordpress.org/support/topic/how-to-deal-with-apostrophes-in-source-url but unfortunately to no result. If anyone has any idea how to solve this puzzle I would be grateful for the help. Example: http://www.tesselaars.com/blog/Inside_Flowers/post/Online_Marketing_for_Florists_Part_1%E2%80%93_A_Website_You_Won%27t_Regret/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Seamoose0 -
Changing URL Structure
We are going to be relaunching our website with a new URL structure. My question is, how is it best to deal with the migration process in terms of old URLS appearing whilst we launch the new ones. How best should we launch the new structure, considering we've in the region of 10,000 pages currently indexed in Google.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NeilTompkins0 -
How to Resolve Duplication of HTTPS & HTPP URLs?
Right now, I am working on eCommerce website. [Lamps Lighting and More] I can find out both URLs in website as follow. HTTP Version: http://www.lampslightingandmore.com/ HTTPS Version: https://www.lampslightingandmore.com/ I have check one of my competitor who has implemented following canonical on both pages. Please, view source code for both URLs. http://www.wayfair.com ** https://www.wayfair.com** Then, I checked similar thing in SEOmoz website. 🙂 Why should I not check in SEOmoz because, They are providing best SEO information so may be using best practice to deal with HTTPS & HTTP. LOL I tried to load following URL so it redirect to home page. https://www.seomoz.org is redirecting to http://www.seomoz.org But, following URL is not redirecting any where as well as not set canonical over there. https://www.seomoz.org/users/settings I can find out following code on http://www.seomoz.org/robots.txt **User-agent: *** ** Disallow: /api/user?*** So, I am quite confuse to solve issue. Which one is best 301 redirect or canonical tag? If any live example to see so that's good for me and make me more confident.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CommercePundit0