google: hypen and underscores

[gb]

Hi!

Referring to http://www.prweaver.com/blog/2004/08...and-underscore
I would like to change all "_" in the directories table to "-".

Please let me know the SQL command for that.

Thanks,
gb

[gb]

figured it out already. you would need to use:

UPDATE dir_categories
SET path=(
REPLACE (`path`,
'_',
'-'));

[Vincent Wright]

Thanks Gerwin -- nice trick.

[OWG]

Be VERY careful about doing this as while one or two hyphens are acceptable, if you have upwards of that it can be seen as spamming the search engines, and Google will take action.

While directory.com/cheap-cars/cars.php is acceptable

directory.com/cheap-cars/cars-for-sale/cheap-honda-cars/cars.php will get you into trouble, if not now then sometime soon. This is not my opinion it is the result of a statement from Matt Cutts a senior Google engineer.

[Vincent Wright]

Probably the optimal soltion would be to have one-level cat paths:

e.g. dir/sub-sub-cat/

instead of

dir/cat/sub-cat/../sub-sub-cat/

In this case you have hyphens but their number is small enough.

[gb]

hmm... the article i was referring to was a bit old (2004)
Seems that google wasn't sleeping that time...

i will think about it.

[Vincent Wright]

Two years are pretty much in IT industry...

[safatweb]

I saw DMOZ itself using "_"

check http://www.dmoz.com/Regional/Asia/Ph...outhern_Leyte/

thanks

[subseo]

Originally Posted by gb

hmm... the article i was referring to was a bit old (2004)
Seems that google wasn't sleeping that time...

I believe it is not whether - sign is good or bad. It is still good. If I remember correctly, it was semi-officially recommended by Google.
The reasoning why _ is slighly worse, had to do something with it's usage in programming languages and IT.

If you got 10 of them in a URL, it's a different thing. But alone, it would mean nothing. It would have to be combined with other factors for Google algorithm to decide that it is junk website. Google probably has way over 100 different factors it uses for ranking. I have seen some high quality blogs to have number of - in url, and no problem with ranking of course.

If anything, it would be just a secondary factor, or one of the factors.

[OWG]

OK gents,

Please understand that I ONLY post things as fact if I am CERTAIN of it as such.

here is the information you need and it is taken from Matt Cutts' Blog. Matt is a SENIOR google engineer and is also the official spokesman for google at SES and other webmaster conferences.

Quote-
To answer a common question, Google doesn’t algorithmically penalize for dashes in the url. Of course I can only speak for Google, not other search engines. And bear in mind that if your domain looks like http://www.buy-cheap-viagra-online-w...ching-porn.com, that may still attract attention for other reasons.
quote!

Now Matt has also stated that too many hyphens while not getting you penalised, will possibly get you noticed. In this case he is referring to the actual words being used as drawing attention.

The delimiter effect is discussed here
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/guest-...eview-session/