Penalized for too many "_" or "-"?

[yfjuan]

Just read somewhere that if there are too many "_" or "-", the ranking gets penalized.

Why is that?

I use these to make the file names easier to read. Seem like a reasonable and humane solution...

Anyone has any insight on this issue? Is this true? How many is too many?

Thanks, YFJ

[mcanerin]

As usual, what you've heard on the internet is a half-truth with a good dose of fantasy and hysteria thrown in for good measure.

Feel free to use dashes in file names. You'd have to go to extremes to get into trouble there.

However, when it comes to domain names, try to avoid anything more than one dash. First, it's hard to remember, and second, it's obviously only done with SEO in mind, rather than people, so although I don't think it's automatically penalized, it would sure put any manual reviewer on alert.

viagra.com - OK
cheap-viagra.com - probably OK
cheap-viagra-fast.com - starting to get suspicious
cheap-viagra-fast-male-erectile-problems-buy-now.com - pretty darn suspicious. Probably spam.

In short, it's spammy-looking. That doesn't mean it's spam, but I remember a search rep mentioning that they had done a check, and found that the vast majority of domains with 3 or more dashes in them to be spam, 2 dashes was iffy, but one dash was fairly normal.

As for the underscore, the reason an SEO will often tell you to avoid those is because it's treated as a hard character, not a space, so although "red-wagon" would be seen as "red wagon" by a search engine, "red_wagon" is a nonsense word, like "redwagon" - meaningless.

Now, if you don't have keywords in the URL, the it's already meaningless and therefore not a problem.

Ian

[Marcia]

Try not to have more than two hyphens in the URL, and avoid URLs that look uber-spammy.

[bsaric]

There are plenty of trusted domains that use to much of - or _ in their url's, so this by itself it's not spam, but it can be one of many factors to detect spam, right?

[mcanerin]

That's right - a hyphen or underscore is not spam.

As an example, most blogging software automatically makes page names based on the title of the post, which can often be a bunch of words, resulting in a bunch of dashes or underscores. This is obviously not spam, just the automatic (and logical) function of blogging software.

But too many dashes or underscores (especially in a domain name) can indicate someone who is more concerned about rankings than usability, and it's a short hop from there to spammer.

So it's not spam, but statistically, the more hyphens in a domain name, the more likely the site is to be spam. It's not the hyphens that are the spam, they are simply an indicator of the thinking of the owner.

An example of this would be people who stuff keywords in comments. This has no effect on rankings and is totally ignored, so it can't be spam, since spam has to actually work to be spam.

But someone stuffing keywords into comment tags indicates the general desperation and cluelessness associated with the majority of spammers. Professional spammers don't do it, but they are a tiny (though prolific) minority.

So it's a red flag, not a conviction. What I would do is ask yourself WHY you are adding dashes and underscores. If it makes sense and results in a usable site, then go for it.

I can't imagine a scenario where someone with any clue at all would register a domain with 3 or more dashes for legitimate, visitor-focused reasons, so that should give you pause.

One last word about underscores. Since they are hard characters that mess up keyword parsing, I can't think of a likely scenario where they would be considered spam. It would have to be stupidly huge long use, and even then I doubt it would result in a penalty by itself. At worst, it might get a reviewer to start looking at the other areas of your site.

It's the dashes that are more effective, and thus more likely to result in issues or review.

Ian