Sorry, didn't realize I had a cookie pass into the paid section.
The gist of the discussion, dated a year ago, was that Google & Inktomi back then clearly preferred hyphens to underscores in path names.
This seems the case with Google today, as I recently have verified myself. That is, Google will not return a page in its database with a pathname of the form "keyword1_keyword2_keyword3" when searched with "keyword1 keyword2 keyword3." But it will return a page with "keyword1-keyword2-keyword3" in the path.
I haven't checked Inktomi's present response. But note the general "pressure" on the folks programing engines is toward accepting hyphens, since hyphens are legal in urls, while underscores are not.
I'm not claming this is the last word. No such thing in optimizing for engines. A couple years ago, underscores were indeed all the rage, and I too was writing paths with underscores for all my clients' sites. Not today, but tomorrow I may be doing it again.
My point with respect to the current plugin discussion is that a really useful search engine optimizing plugin will take into account that the rules of the game do change, and provide configuration options so even those who can't hack the thing can roll with the punches.
P.S. Google also seems to read and index plain spaces (MS style) and %20 as multi-term path and filename separators.
The gist of the discussion, dated a year ago, was that Google & Inktomi back then clearly preferred hyphens to underscores in path names.
This seems the case with Google today, as I recently have verified myself. That is, Google will not return a page in its database with a pathname of the form "keyword1_keyword2_keyword3" when searched with "keyword1 keyword2 keyword3." But it will return a page with "keyword1-keyword2-keyword3" in the path.
I haven't checked Inktomi's present response. But note the general "pressure" on the folks programing engines is toward accepting hyphens, since hyphens are legal in urls, while underscores are not.
I'm not claming this is the last word. No such thing in optimizing for engines. A couple years ago, underscores were indeed all the rage, and I too was writing paths with underscores for all my clients' sites. Not today, but tomorrow I may be doing it again.
My point with respect to the current plugin discussion is that a really useful search engine optimizing plugin will take into account that the rules of the game do change, and provide configuration options so even those who can't hack the thing can roll with the punches.
P.S. Google also seems to read and index plain spaces (MS style) and %20 as multi-term path and filename separators.