URLs: Dash vs. Underscore [closed]

Question

Should it be /about_us or /about-us?

From usability point of view, I personally think /about-us is much better for end-user yet Google and most other websites (and javascript frameworks) use underscore naming pattern. Is it just matter of style? Are there any compatibility issues with dashes?

Answer 1

Spaces are allowed in URL's, so you can just use "/about us" in a link (although that will be encoded to "/about%20us". But be honest, this will always be personal preference, so there is no real answer to be given here.

I would go with the convention that dashes can appear in words, so spaces should be converted to underscores.

Answer 2

Google did not treat underscore as a word separator in the past, which I thought was pretty crazy, but apparently it does now. Because of this history, dashes are preferred. Even though underscores are now permissible from an SEO point of view, I still think that dashes are best.

One benefit is that your average semi-computer-illiterate web surfer is much more likely to be able to type a dash on the keyboard, they may not even know what the underscore is.

Answer 3

The SEO guru Jim Westergren tested this back in 2005 from a strict SEO perspective and came to the conclusion that + (plus) was actually the best word delimiter. However, this doesn't seem reasonable and may be due to a bug in the search engines' algorithms. He recommends - (dash) for both readability and SEO.

Answer 4

For end-user view i prefer "about-us" or "about us" not "about_us"

Answer 5

It's not just dash vs. underscore:

• text with spaces
• textwithoutspaces
• encoded%20spaces%20in%20URL
• underscore_means_space
• dash-means-space
• plus+means+space
• camelCase
• PascalCase
• " quoted text with spaces" (and single quote vs. double quote)
• slash/means/space
• dot.means.space

Answer 6

Underscores replace spaces where whitespace is not allowed. Dashes (hyphens) can be part of a word, thus joining words with hyphens that already include hyphens is ugly/confusing.

Bad:

/low-budget-movies

Good:

/low-budget_movies