When you are building URLs that should be legible for users and search engines and you do it automatically from the content, what's the best way to represent blank spaces? Hyphens (this is what StackOverflow uses)? Underscores? Any other? Does any of those make a different for SEO?
Both are valid URL characters and both have their pros and cons.
Pro dash
Google recommends dashes, and here is what Matt Cutts from Google has to say about
Dashes vs. underscores.
If you have a url like word1-word2,
that page can be returned for the
searches word1, word2, and even “word1
word2″.
That’s why I would always choose
dashes instead of underscores.
Dashes seem to be what major blogs do:
The Huffington Post,
TechCrunch,
Engadget, ...
Dashes seem to be what major CMS do.
Not sure about that one anymore, can anyone comment?
As mentioned by Kazar, underscores can clash with the underlining of links.
I find underscores awkward to type.
Rene Saarsoo pointed out that dashes take less space than underscores in proportional fonts.
Ionut G. Stan mentioned that underscores are not allowed in hostnames. If you strive for consistency you should opt for dashes.
Pro underscore
Dashes are not allowed in
ISO9660 file systems.
This can be a problem if your content is also shipped on DVD or CD (e.g help files or
eLearning content).
In some languages (e.g. German) dashes can be word characters and are not generally considered word separators.
Another advantage of dashes is that in proportional font they take less space that underscores. Compare:
https://stackoverflow.com/../whats-the-best-character-to-represent-blank-spaces-in-a-url
https://stackoverflow.com/../whats_the_best_character_to_represent_blank_spaces_in_a_url
It's not a lot, but every little helps :)
Again, personal preference - personally I think hyphens work better than underscores, because underscores can clash with the underlining a tags add (by default), so http://someurl.com/this_is_a_address looks like there are no underscores there. (as this is stack overflow, roll over the link). http://someurl.com/this-is-a-address looks fine.
You know, if you buy a domain name, you're allowed to use hyphens inside that name, but no underscores. This is an additional reason for which I believe hyphens are better than underscores.
I'd say dashes. I used to use underscored for pretty much every such purpose (representing spaces) but nowadays, with all the visual thingies blinking all round, you often find underlining that makes them normally invisible.
This may answer your question. Things looks like changed for Google few years ago about - and _
See this article here:
http://www.blog-tutorials.com/marketing-and-seo/linking/google-oks-underscores-as-word-separators-in-urls-and-more-seo-tips/
I think that depends on your favorite. My favourites are underscores, but I don't see any (dis-)advantages if using hyphens or other valid URL characters instead. And everything looks better than %20 :)
Related
Is anyone aware of any problems with using commas in SEO friendly URL's? I'm working with some software that uses a lot of commas in it's SEO friendly URL's; but I am 100% certain I have seen some instances where some programs/platforms don't recognize the URL correctly & cut the "linking" of the URL off after the first comma.
I just tested this out with thunderbird, gmail, hotmail & on a SMF forum with no problems; however I know I have seen the issue before.
So my question is, is there anything in particular that would cause some platforms to stop linking URL's with a comma? Such as a certain character after the comma?
There will be countless implementations that will cut the automatical linking at that point. As with many other characters, too. But that’s not a problem because of using these characters, but because of a wrong/incomplete implementation.
See for example this very site, Stack Overflow. It will cut off the link at the * when manually entering/pasting this URL (see bug; in case it gets fixed, here’s a screenshot of it):
http://wayback.archive.org/web/*/http://www.example.com/
But when using the hyperlink syntax, it works fine:
http://wayback.archive.org/web/*/http://www.example.com/
The * character is allowed in an HTTP URL path, so the link detection should have recognized the first URL instead of breaking it at the occurence of *.
Regarding the comma:
The comma is a reserved character and its meaning is relevant for the URL path (bold emphasis mine):
Aside from dot-segments in hierarchical paths, a path segment is
considered opaque by the generic syntax. URI producing applications
often use the reserved characters allowed in a segment to delimit
scheme-specific or dereference-handler-specific subcomponents. For
example, the semicolon (";") and equals ("=") reserved characters are
often used to delimit parameters and parameter values applicable to
that segment. The comma (",") reserved character is often used for
similar purposes. For example, one URI producer might use a segment
such as "name;v=1.1" to indicate a reference to version 1.1 of
"name", whereas another might use a segment such as "name,1.1" to
indicate the same.
So, if you don’t intend to use the comma for the function it has as reserved character, you may want to percent-encode it with %2C. Users copying such an URL from their browser’s address bar would paste it in the encoded form, so it should work almost everywhere.
However, especially because it’s a reserved character, the unencoded form should work, too.
I have a long URL with several values.
Example 1:
http://www.domain.com/list?seach_type[]=0&search_period[]=1&search_min=3000&search_max=21000&search_area=6855%3B7470%3B7700%3B7730%3B7741%3B7742%3B7752%3B7755%3B7760%3B7770%3B7800%3B7840%3B7850%3B7860%3B7870%3B7884%3B7900%3B7950%3B7960%3B7970%3B7980%3B7990%3B8620%3B8643%3B8800%3B8830%3B8831%3B8832%3B8840%3B8850%3B8860%3B8881%3B9620%3B9631%3B9632
My variable search area contains only 4 number digits (example 4000, 5000), but can contain a lot of them. Right now I seperate these in the URL by using ; as separator symbol. Though as seen in Example 1, the ; is converted into %3B. This makes me believe that this is a bad symbol to use.
What is the best URL separator?
Moontear, I think you have misread the linked document. That limitation only applies to the "scheme" portion of the URL. In the case of WWW URLs, that is the "http".
The next section of the document goes on to say:
Thus, only alphanumerics, the special characters "$-_.+!*'(),", and
reserved characters used for their reserved purposes may be used
unencoded within a URL.
I'd personally use comma (,). However, plus (+) and dash (-) are both reasonable options as well.
BTW, that document also mentions that semi-colon (;) is reserved in some schemes.
Well, according to RFC1738, valid URLs may only contain the letters a-z, the plus sign (+), period and hyphen (-).
Generally I would go with a plus to separate your search areas. So your URL would become http://www.domain.com/list?seach_type=0&search_period=1&search_min=3000&search_max=21000&search_area=6855+7470+7700+...
--EDIT--
As GinoA pointed out I misread the document. Hence "$-_.+!*'()," are valid characters too. I'd still go with the + sign though.
If there are only numbers to separate, you have a large choice of separators. You can choose any letter for example.
Probably a space can be a good choice. It will be transformed into + character in the URL, so will be more readable than a letter.
Example: search_area=4000+5000+6000
I'm very late to the party, but a valid query string can repeat variables so instead of...
http://x.y.z/list?type=0&period=1&min=3000&max=21000&area=6855+7470+7700
...you could also use...
http://x.y.z/list?type=0&period=1&min=3000&max=21000&area=6855&area=7470&area=7700
"+" is to be interpreted as a space " " when the content-type is application/x-www-form-urlencoded (standard for HTML forms). This may be handled by your server software.
I prefer "!". It doesn't get URL encoded (at least not in Chrome) and it reserves "+" for use as a real space character in the typical case.
I have seen some websites that use äöå-characters in their slugs (they don't convert them to aoo). So what's the case?
Åå (as in affOrd), Ää (as in Air), and Öö (as in gIrl) are our lovely Swedish additions to the latin alphabet. Nowadays, these can even be used in domain names (at least under the .SE top-level domain). See, for instance, http://www.linköping.se. Of course, this is an example of an IDN.
Yes, they are!
But see here: Should I use accented characters in URLs?
Why do you need to encode urls? Is there a good reason why you have to change every space in the GET data to %20?
Because some characters have special meanings.
For instance, in a query string, the ampersand (&) is used as a separator between key-value pairs. If you were to put an ampersand into one of those values, it would look like the separator between the end of a value and the beginning of the next key. So for special characters like this, we use percent encoding so that we can be sure that the data is unambiguously encoded.
From RFC 2936, section 2.4.3:
The space character is excluded
because significant spaces may
disappear and insignificant spaces may
be introduced when URI are transcribed
or typeset or subjected to the
treatment of word- processing
programs. Whitespace is also used to
delimit URI in many contexts.
originally older browsers could get confused by the spaces (not really an issue anymore).
now, if someone copies the url to send as a link - the space can break the hyperlink - ie
Hey! Check out this derping cat playing a piano!
http://www.mysite.com/?video=funny cat plays piano.
See how the link breaks?
Now look at this:
http://www.mysite.com/?video=funny%20cat%20plays%20piano.
Let's break down your question.
Why do you need to encode URL?
A URL is composed of only a limited number of characters and those are digits(0-9), letters(A-Z, a-z), and a few special characters("-", ".", "_", "~").
So does it mean that we cannot use any other character?
The answer to this question is "YES". But wait a minute, there is a hack and the hack is URL Encoding or Perchantage Encoding. So if you want to transmit any character which is not a member of the above mentioned (digits, letters, and special chars), then we need to encode them. And that is why we need to encode "space" as "%20".
OK? Is this enough for URL encoding? No this is not enough, there's a lot about URL encoding but here, I'm not gonna make it a pretty big, boring technical answer. But If you want to know more, then you can read it from here: https://www.urlencoder.io/learn/ (Credit goes to this writer)
Well, you do so because every different browsers knows how the string that makes up the URL is encoded. converting the space to %20, etc makes that URL/URI portable. It could be latin-1 it could be unicode. It needs normalized to something that is understood universally. Take a look at rfc3986 https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3986#section-2.1
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Is it better convention to use hyphens or underscores in your URLs?
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?
From Google Webmaster Central
Consider using punctuation in your
URLs. The URL
http://www.example.com/green-dress.html
is much more useful to us than
http://www.example.com/greendress.html.
We recommend that you use hyphens (-)
instead of underscores (_) in your
URLs.
Here are a few points in favor of the dashes:
Dashes are recommended by Google over underscores (source).
Dashes are more familiar to the end user.
Dashes are easier to write on a standard keyboard (no need to Shift).
Dashes don't hide behind underlines.
Dashes feel more native in the context of URLs as they are allowed in domain names.
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
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.
This is just a guess, but it seems they picked the one that people most probably wouldn't use in a name. This way you can have a name that includes a hyphenated word, and still use the underbar as a word delimiter, e.g. UseTwo-wayLinks could be converted to use_two-way_links.
In your example, /about-us would be a directory named the hyphenated word "about-us" (if such a word existed, and /about_us would be a directory named the two-word phrase "about us" converted to a single string of non-white characters.
I used to use underscores all the time, now I only use them for parts of a web site that I don't want anyone to directly link, js files, css, ... etc.
From an SEO point of view, dashes seem to be the preferred way of handling it, for a detailed explanation, from the horses mouth http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/dashes-vs-underscores/.
The other problem that seems to occur, more with the general public than programmers, is that when a hyperlink with underscores is underlined, you can't see the underscore. Advanced users will work it out, but Joe Public probably won't.
Still use underscores in code in preference to dashes though - programmers understand them, most other people don't.
Jeff has some thoughts on this: https://blog.codinghorror.com/of-spaces-underscores-and-dashes/
There are drawbacks to both. I would suggest that you pick one and be consistent.
I'm more comfortable with underscores. First of all, they match in with my regular programming experience of variable_names_are_not-subtraction, second of all, and I believe this was mentioned already, words can have hyphens, but they do not ever have underscores. To pick a really stupid example, "Nation-state country" is different from "nation state country". The former translates something like "the land of nation-states" (think "this here is gun country! Best move along, y'hear?"), whereas the latter looks like a list of sometime-synonyms. http://example.com/nation-state-country/ doesn't appear to mean the same as http://example.com/nation-state_country/, and yet, if hyphens are delimiters/"space"s in addition to characters in words, it can. The latter seems more clear as to the actual purpose, whereas the former looks more like that list, if anything.
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.
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
I think dash is better from a user perspective and it will not interfere with SEO.
Not sure where or why the underscore convention started.
A little more knowledgeable debate
I prefer dashes on the basis that an underscore might be obscured to an extent by a link underline. Textual URLs are primarily for being recognised at a glance rather than being grammatically correct so the argument for preserving dashes for use in hyphenated words is limited.
Where the accuracy of a textual URL is important is when reading it out to someone, in which case you don't want to confuse an underscore for a space (or vice-versa).
I also find dashes more aesthetically pleasing, if that counts for anything.
For end-user view i prefer "about-us" or "about us" not "about_us"
Personally, I'd avoid using about-us or about_us, and just use about.
Some older web hosting and DNS servers actually have problems parsing underscores for URLs, so that may play a part in conventions like these.
I personally would avoid all dashes and underscores and opt for camelCase or PascalCase if its in code.
The Wikipedia article on camelCase explains a bit of the reasoning behind it's origins. They amount to
Lazy programmers who didn't like
reaching for the _ key
Potential confusion about
readability
The "Alto" keyboard at xerox PARC
that had no underscore key.
If the user is to see the string then I'd do none of the above and use "About us." or "AboutUs" if I had to as camelCase has spread to common usage in some areas such as product names. i.e ThinkPad, TiVo
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.
Better use . - / as separators, because _ seems not to be a separator.
http://www.sistrix.com/blog/832-how-long-may-a-linktext-be.html