URL extensions naming

[Johnny4B]

I have always wrote URL extensions as www.mysite.com/two_words.html .... when I need to separate two words, I use _ as the separator ...

I am a first time SEO Moz user ... I

While looking around the tools on SEO Moz, I happened to stumble across the on-page analysis.

A great tool indeed, rather worryingly though, one issue it flagged to me was my URL extension

"Characters which are less commonly used in URLs may cause problems with accessibility, interpretation and ranking in search engines. It is considered a best practice to stick to standard URL structures to avoid potential problems."

Can someone advice me if this really is a problem, its just not this project, its tons of sites I have already developed that I am also worried about ...

I always write file extensions with more than one word using _ to separate the words.

How should I write the extension, I am almost embarrassed to ask this question ...

Surely, even Google's algorithms are not smart enough to decipher two words without some some sort of spacing ....

Regards

J

[Johnny4B]

Thanks ....

Hmmm, I learn something new everyday .... Well I learn lots, but this one in particular will inevitably lead me to changing very old habits

[donford]

Adam is correct,

When I was hired at my company 3 years ago everything was underscores, so I had to evaluate if renaming would be beneficial. At the time I came across this video from Matt Cutts

What I took away from this is the following, which I use today as general guidelines.

If the page already exist and is performing well
I leave it as it

If the page already exist but isn't performing well and only has 2 keywords separated
Content Update, and re-evaluate a month of so later

If the page already exist isn't performing well and is separating 3 or more keywords with underscores (red_delicious_apples.html) Content update, and switch to dashes and 301 direct old page to new page

If the page is a new page
Just use dashes

That is my general strategy for handling pages. There are other things to consider such as site uniformity, some owners/marketing directors don't like their sites urls to be mixed, and some sites which use CMS systems may have to go for an all or none approach.

I hope that helps.

[Adam.Whittles]

Generally it is considered best practice to separate words using a hyphen (-) rather than an underscore (_) as Google recognises hyphens as spaces. It also looks much neater using hyphens in urls as opposed to underscores which is why I advise using hyphens instead.

However, it doesn't really make a huge difference as Google can generally recognise the keywords without the use of hyphens. There are of course exceptions to this. The most famous example of this being www.expertsexchange.com. I'm sure you can see the issues with this domain.

Hope this helps.