Dashes vs Underscores
 

I have a question that I keep finding conflicting information on!

Per SEO are dashes in the URL string better than underscores?

For example if you have www.domain.com/new-site or www.domain.com/new_site.

An answer is needed rather quickly. Thank you!

underscore for me

Dashes

Can you either of you explain why?

We have already had this discussion so go read through the threads over here http://www.seo-guy.com/forum/thread18249.html

dash is better. Dash is treated as a space while the underscore is treaded as a hard character hence making your url or keywords in this case as one. Such as as new_site is one word, which now doesn't make sense.

A dash is slightly better for new pages but don't change all your old pages if they are already indexed reliably and ranking well. It'll likely do more harm than good.

Thank you all for your replies.