Google SEO File Naming… Which is better NewYorkCity , New-York-City, New_York_City

[evans49950383]

After 10 years of doing it wrong, I thought I would try to get a correct answer before I go back and redo 1k+ file names.

Previously a typical file Name would be:

0583_Evan_Sante-AppleiPhone_iPhotography_Balu_ArtDeco_Graffiti_Female_Portrait_YellowHair_Bowler_Hat_Bolo_Tie_Attitude_190Bowery_EastVillage_NYC_NewYork

I would use underscores to separate keywords and CamelCase to separate multiple word concepts.

As I just found out dashes are preferred over underscore but which is better regarding concepts:

New_York_City or NewYorkCity? After a few days of research, It seems like Google treats them the same but I can’t find anything definitive?

Also how does Google treat Hashtags in file Names? If anyone knows a good resource forum for these types of questions, Does Google have such a thing or definitively knows the answer I would be grateful. - CES

[Rob Hecker2]

GOOGLE hates underscores and will lower your mobile compatibility ranking if urls include them.

If the file is an image, an include, javascript, css, etc., then GOOGLE has no reason to care.

[osgood_]

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Rob+Hecker2  wrote

GOOGLE hates underscores and will lower your mobile compatibility ranking if urls include them.

First time I've heard of that. I use underscores in file names regularly. Doesn't seem to have done any damage to Google rankings at all. A lot of what is to do with Google is all hearsay in my opinion.

They can't even get their own sites right so why should anyone take what they inform very seriously. Im not sure they even believe the dross they spin out at times as they dont seem to follow their own preachings

[Rob Hecker2]

It used to be all speculation regarding what GOOGLE cared about, but these days GOOGLE provides a lot of information and advice. I believe it was the state-wide mobile usability report that docked me for having underscores.

See the second paragraph on this page:

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/76329?hl=en

[Nancy OShea]

I'd say if you're using underscores and the page ranking is fairly high, don't change it.  No sense fixing something that's not broken.   For new pages, use hyphens.

Nancy

[osgood_]

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Rob+Hecker2  wrote

It used to be all speculation regarding what GOOGLE cared about, but these days GOOGLE provides a lot of information and advice. I believe it was the state-wide mobile usability report that docked me for having underscores.

See the second paragraph on this page:

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/76329?hl=en

I never really follow anything if I did I'd be using Bootstrap

Google likes to tell how to optimise your website and then fail to follow their own guidlines when constructing their own pages.

After some researching the consensus of opinion is not to use underscores but I dont know how much that is driven by the ripple of the internet effect amongst developers.

All I can say is I have sites very highly ranked in both desktop and mobile which use underscores. What you have in the actual page 'the meat' as I call it probably counts for lot more.

[Jon Fritz]

I watched a video where a rep from Google specifically stated (I'm paraphrasing here) that it doesn't make a difference to Google themselves which one a site uses. However, from a "mobile friendly" point of view - is better than _ because it takes less effort, on pretty much all mobile keyboards, to get a hyphen than an underscore.

I'll see if I can find it, it was part of a longer video from last year sometime.

[Jon Fritz]

Found it...

English Google Webmaster Central SMB site-clinic - YouTube

Starting at about 20:45 the subject of 301 redirecting _ pages to - because of the desire to "do it the way Google likes" comes up.

According to one of the guys in charge of telling us what Google cares about, at least in May of 2016, Google didn't.

[osgood_]

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Jon+Fritz+II  wrote

I watched a video where a rep from Google specifically stated (I'm paraphrasing here) that it doesn't make a difference to Google themselves which one a site uses. However, from a "mobile friendly" point of view - is better than _ because it takes less effort, on pretty much all mobile keyboards, to get a hyphen than an underscore.

I'll see if I can find it, it was part of a longer video from last year sometime.

I can see that but i dont see many if any websites with a domain which use an underscore so how can that make a difference? Once your at the point of entry you never type in the url to a page.

I dont see it as a big enough plus to even worry about myself, a bit hyped up.

Most clients would'nt say have a look at this page - www.mywesbsite.com/my_damn_nice_products_page_for_you_to_look_at.php

They would say go to my website mywebsite.com or my-website.com and click on the 'products' tab.

Much to do about nothing in my opinion.

[Jon Fritz]

You're right, within the scope of a conversation, one is definitely not going to give an address like that.

However there are definitely times where www.mywebsite.com/some-phrase will be given, especially in non-internet based marketing (television, trade magazines, radio, etc).

It comes up more often than you might think in those situations, and when it does, it's better to use a hyphen than an underscore when the words are going to be separated.

Again, Google doesn't care, so there's no reason to change _ to - if that's the way you do it.

It's just more convenient for the mobile user in those situations where someone will need to type an address.

[osgood_]

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Jon+Fritz+II  wrote

It comes up more often than you might think in those situations, and when it does, it's better to use a hyphen than an underscore when the words are going to be separated.

I think that may happen on larger sites (infact it does as I work for an organisation, not on the website side) with hundreds of pages and sections but on a smaller site like most of us are used to working on, probably never.

I don't think its a bad idea to use a hypen and maybe from now on I will just incase in future situations arise and I do need to publish an internal url in a publication etc but I don't think using an underscore will have any significant effect in terms of ranking as has been suggested but seems to be confirmed not in the video.

[Nancy OShea]

For marketing materials,  I typically use an index page inside a subfolder.

http://example.com/promo/

or sometimes  http://promo.example.com

[osgood_]

Christ there isn't a lot of time difference is there just testing on my Anroid device I still have to hit the caps button to evoke a dash

So its caps - dash rather than sym - underscore - ABC

Anyone whos quick it aint going to make much of a difference. Most of my websites only have something like /about_us.php or /contact_us.php. No real significant time saving in that instance.

Now if you could just press the dash and get a dash without first having to press the caps button then it would make a difference.

I think this is just idiots making a mountain out of a mole hill.

If you do have something like:

my_beautiful_new_flower_arranging_page_for_you_to_view_at_your_own_leisure_whilst_sitting_on_your_comfortable_settee_at_home.php

then youre a dumb assed monkey