Is it worth switching from underscores to hyphens in the URL?
-
I work for a website that recently did a redesign, and switched from hyphens to underscores. We have seen some drop in traffic, although that may be attributed to the migration.
I have read that while Google prefers hyphens, the underscore problem is not as much of an issue as it used to be.
Is it worth 301'ing the page to a version of itself with hyphens instead of underscores in the URL?
-
Darren is absolutely right. However, it seems unclear as to whether or not you set up 301-redirects from your old URLs to your new URLs. If you did, then the drop should only be temporary as Google figures out where the new URLs are and the old authority is passed to the new pages (or at least most of it). If you didn't do any 301-redirects, and you still have access to a spreadsheet or sitemap of your old URLs I'd encourage you to set up 301 redirects as soon as possible. Otherwise, it will indeed be like starting completely over with a new site, regardless of hyphens or underscores.
-
The drop in traffic isn't because Google prefers hyphens, it's because all your page URLs changed. You had a bunch of web pages that Google knew about, were in its index, and now they're gone. You now have a bunch of new pages that have to start building trust and authority from scratch.
I'd change them back to dashes, then set up 301 redirects for all the underscore versions.
-
Sorry, let me clarify. By used to I mean before the domain was migrated over. So it was hyphens on the old site, but was changed to underscores on the new site.
-
Hyphens vs underscores doesn't make a difference any more. If you're purely thinking of making the change for SEO purposes, I wouldn't do it. I agree that the drop in traffic you are seeing has more to do with replatforming and rewriting all of your URLs. This is pretty normal. Hope that helps!
-
You said it used to be hyphens and then was changed to underscores. if this was done recently then change it back and don't bother 301'ing unless you got a decent amount of links in that time period. i am assuming you 301'd the hyphens to the underscores, if so you need to undo that was well.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Faceted Navigation URLs Best Practices
Hi, We are developing new Products Pages with faceted filters. You can see it here: https://www.viatrading.com/wholesale-products/ We have a feature allowing to Order By and Group By, which alters the order of all products. There will also be the option to view Products as a table, which will contain same products but with different design and maybe slightly different content of each product. All this will happen without changing the URL, https://www.viatrading.com/all/ Is this the best practice? Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | viatrading10 -
Does rewriting a URL affect the page authority?
Hi all, I recently optimized an overview page for a car rental website. Because the page didn’t rank very well, I rewrote the URL, putting the exact keyword combination in it. Then I asked Google to re-crawl the URL through Search Console. This afternoon, I checked Open Site Explorer and saw that the Page Authority had decreased to 1, while the subpages still have an authority of about 18-20. Hence my question: is rewriting a URL a bad idea for SEO? Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LiseDE
Lise0 -
Is This Worth Fixing?
Hi, I'm working on a site that was last optimized some years ago. It has a fair number of pages that the url, h1, title tag and image alt exact match. Although this comes back as A+ in Moz's on page grader, it seems a bit much. What do you think, is all this too heavy an SEO fingerprint for Google?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
Mixing static.htm urls and dynamic urls on a Windows IIS Server?
Hi all, We've had a website originally built using static html with .htm extensions ranking well in Google hence we want to keep those pages/urls. We are on a dedicated sever (Windows IIS). However our developer has custom made a new DYNAMIC section for the site which shows new added products dynamically and allows them to be booked online via shopping cart. We are having problems displaying them both on the same domain even if we put the dynamic section withing its own subfolder and keep the static htms in the root. Is it possible to have both function on IIS (even if they may have to function a little separately)? Does anyone have previous experience of this kind of issue or a way of making both work? What setup do we need to do on the dedicated server.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | emerald0 -
WIX? How to change URLS and is it any good for SEO
I have Wix website and want to change its url structure, but not able to do so, any one know how to do so?. Does below URLs work for SEO? And Is Wix is good for SEO or not? abc.com/#!how-it-works/c46c abc.com/#!party-event/c1lzb
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Dan_Brown10 -
What Should I Do With My URL Names?
I release property on my blog each week, and it has come to the point we will get property in the same area as we have had in the past. So, I name my URL /blah-blah-blah-[area of property]/ for the first property in that area right. Now I get a different property in that same area and the URL will have to be named /blah-blah-blah-[area of property]-2/. Now I'm not sure if this is a major issue or not, but I'm sure there must be a better way than this, and I don't really want to take down our past properties - unless you can give me good reason too, of course? So before I start getting URLs like this: /blah-blah-blah-[area of property]-2334343534654/ (well, ok, maybe not that bad! But you get my point) I wanted to see what everyones opinion on it is 🙂 Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JonathanRolande0 -
Changing a URL structure within a site
Im moving a page over from www.domain.com/page to www.domain/category/page currently www.domain.com/page is ranking in google. Would a 301 do the job? is there anything else needed to help keep SE positions?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEODinosaur0 -
Duplicate URL home page
I just got a duplicate URL error on by SEOMOZ report - and I wonder if I should worry about it Assume my site is named www.widgets.com I'm getting duplicate url from http://www.widgets.com & http://www.widgets.com/ Do the search engines really see this as different on the home page? The general drift on the web is that You site should look like Home page = http://www.widgets.com And subpages http://www.widgets.com/widget1/ Of course it seems as though the IIS7 slash tool will rewrite everything Including the home page to a slash.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ThomasErb0