Technical SEO

Underscore URLs

Shahid Maqbool

By Shahid Maqbool
On Jun 20, 2023

Underscore URLs

What are Underscore URLs?

An underscore URL is a website address that has the "_" character in it. For example, "www.example.com/my_example_page.html" uses underscores.

While you can use underscores in web addresses, it goes against standard practices for the internet. The underscore isn't really meant for website URLs.

The Problem with Underscores

So what's wrong with using underscores? Well, Google and other major search engines actually prefer website addresses that are simple and clean without any unnecessary characters like underscores.

Their web crawlers can read and understand URLs with hyphens (-) separating words much more easily than ones with underscores.

A URL like "www.example.com/my-example-page.html" using hyphens just looks neater and more search engine friendly.

How It Affects Rankings

Using underscores in your website URLs can potentially hurt your ability to rank well in search results like Google.

While it's just one small factor, search engines tend to give preference to URLs with hyphens to separate words.

So if you want your website and content to show up better in searches, you'll want to avoid underscores and use hyphens in your URLs instead.

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