Hyphens vs Underscores in URL?

Often times you will see URL’s and page titles are separated by hyphens and underscores. And if you are doing search engine optimization, you have probably  asked yourself which one should provide best results in search engine result page ( SERP’s ).

Let’s take a look on this website I found.

http://www.sentinelbusinesscentres.com/express_business_setup.php

and if you search for: ( copy the whole text below and search it in google )

allinurl: express site:www.sentinelbusinesscentres.com

or ( copy the whole text below and search it in google )

allinurl: express business setup site:www.sentinelbusinesscentres.com

You get 0 results. Whereas: ( copy the whole text below and search it in google )

allinurl: express_business_setup site:www.sentinelbusinesscentres.com

the page shows up in the results fine.

In July 2007 San Francisco Wordcamp, somebody blogged and said that Matt Cutts had shared in an audience and said that  underscore in URL would soon to be treated as word separator.

But what he actually dis say that year was

Google was looking at that now” and it is NOT a “done deal at this point.

If you’re starting fresh, I’d still pick dashes.

If you are starting a new site and you are thinking which is a better choice, go with the Hyphen.  Hyphen is the recommend choice by most optimizers and even Matt recommended that you go with hyphens or dashes.

Google treats hyphens and underscores/dashes differently so better think again when creating your URL pages. You also have to consider your URL structure when creating website for you to increase your site’s visibility in search engines.