URL construction in 2014

[irdeto]

Hey guys,

I was wondering if you could tell me your thoughts about how a URL is perceived by the algo in 2014?

For example:

http://www.moneyexpert.com/reviews/credit-cards/amex-platinum/

and lets say

http://www.moneyexpert.com/reviews_credit-cards_review_amex-platinum.html

In the eyes of google do both different style of url generally help google understand the same result? or will the keyword rich html url have a bigger benefit?

I am looking forward to your advice on this matter. I don't plan on doing a lot of SEO but rather letting nature take its course so to speak... so i just wanted to make sure i construct this site with 'best practice'.

[ataraxis2000]

Yes don't use underscores. Underscores make your url looks spammy and so do long urls.

Go for the first example for sure.

[irdeto]

Thanks very much for responding.

I look forward to hearing a few more opinions on this if anyone else can help please.

[gazzerman1]

Always use hyphens instead of underscores, There have been numerous test that show the underscores are not a good signal for a separate word. This has also been mentioned by a few people at Google in random videos in the past from what I remember. However Google's John Mueller has said recently that the URL does not even matter and they don't use it as a signal, I call BS on that for now and would 100% go the first one.

Also imagine a situation where you may need to take action on a whole directory for some reason. I would make sure your url looked like the first one so that you could use robots.txt or GWT services to remove or make changes to a specific set of pages all in one go.