Gadgetopia

Underscores are now word separators, proclaims Google: This is interesting for a couple reasons. First, because it’s just good to know. Second, because it confirms the value of keywords in the URL, as I’ve questioned in the past.

One key development that Matt shared with the audience was that underscores in URLs are now (or at least very soon to be) treated as word separators by Google. That’s great news, because it historically hasn’t been that way. Back in 2005, Matt stated that Google did not view underscores in URLs as word separators. That meant that in a URL like “iphone_review.html” Googlebot couldn’t “see” the words iphone or review.