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    4. Double hyphen in URL - bad?

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    Double hyphen in URL - bad?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
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    • CFSSEO
      CFSSEO last edited by

      Instead of a URL such as domain.com/double-dash/  programming wants to use domain.com/double--dash/ for some reason that makes things easier for them.

      Would a double dash in the URL have a negative effect on the page ranking?

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • ECN
        ECN last edited by

        Indeed.com uses the double hyphen in their URL scheme and it certainly doesn't seem to hurt them.  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.

        Example:q-Tennis-Channel-jobs.html

        Maps back to the company Tennis Channel

        Example: /cmp/Sag--aftra

        Maps back to the company Sag-Aftra

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • CFSSEO
          CFSSEO @RyanPurkey last edited by

          LOL I love it.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • RyanPurkey
            RyanPurkey @EGOL last edited by

            Or make the Keurig sessions min-value:10 every day until this is solved.

            CFSSEO 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • EGOL
              EGOL last edited by

              I would tell programming that their access to the Keurig is invalid until they get this figured out.

              RyanPurkey 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
              • Bio-RadAbs
                Bio-RadAbs last edited by

                • Have you seen websites use double dashes?

                A single dash has become norm and users read it and use it that way, but a double dash is outside the norm in my opinion and you could end up with a lot of incorrect backlinks. A customer might type the URL with a single dash and end up with a 404 page for instance.

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                • RyanPurkey
                  RyanPurkey last edited by

                  Hyphens are a very common convention in folder names, and while too many can possibly be a negative in a domain name (it-is-a-really-hyphenated-domain.com for example) they're an accepted practice in folder / file names.

                  One thing I'd ask though is if someone had a hyphen in their folder name to begin with, would that cause something like /double-----dash--becomes--quintuple--dash/ ?  If so I'd ask them to try a little harder to get the dashes down to a minimum, just for the sake of keeping the URL shorter overall.

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
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