Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Double hyphen in URL - bad?
-
Instead of a URL such as domain.com/double-dash/ programming wants to use domain.com/double--dash/ for some reason that makes things easier for them.
Would a double dash in the URL have a negative effect on the page ranking?
-
Indeed.com uses the double hyphen in their URL scheme and it certainly doesn't seem to hurt them. I Imagine this is due to being able to reconstitute this back from URL rewriting so they know the difference between a dash in the URL that replaces a "space" vs a -- which would reconstitute back to a dash.
Example:q-Tennis-Channel-jobs.html
Maps back to the company Tennis Channel
Example: /cmp/Sag--aftra
Maps back to the company Sag-Aftra
-
LOL I love it.
-
Or make the Keurig sessions min-value:10 every day until this is solved.
-
I would tell programming that their access to the Keurig is invalid until they get this figured out.
-
- Have you seen websites use double dashes?
A single dash has become norm and users read it and use it that way, but a double dash is outside the norm in my opinion and you could end up with a lot of incorrect backlinks. A customer might type the URL with a single dash and end up with a 404 page for instance.
-
Hyphens are a very common convention in folder names, and while too many can possibly be a negative in a domain name (it-is-a-really-hyphenated-domain.com for example) they're an accepted practice in folder / file names.
One thing I'd ask though is if someone had a hyphen in their folder name to begin with, would that cause something like /double-----dash--becomes--quintuple--dash/ ? If so I'd ask them to try a little harder to get the dashes down to a minimum, just for the sake of keeping the URL shorter overall.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Changing Url Removes Backlink
Hello MOZ Community, I have question regarding Bad Backlink Removal. My Site's Post's Image got 4 to 5k backlinks from unknown sites and also their is no contact details on their site so that i can contact them to remove. So, I have an idea for which i want suggestion " If I change the url that receieves backlinks" does this will remove backlinks? For Example: https://example.com/test/ got 5k backlinks if I change this url to https://examplee.com/test-failed/ does this will remove those 5k backlinks? If not then How Can I remove those Backlinks? I Know about disavow but this takes time.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jackson210 -
Inactive Products - Inactive URLs
Hi, In our website www.viatrading.com we have many products that might be in stock or not depending on availability. Until now, when a product was not available anymore, we took this page down (and redirected to its product category page). And, only if the product was available again, we re-activated the URL - this might be days, months or even years later. To make this more SEO-friendly, we decided now that while a product is not available, instead or deactivating/redirecting the page, we will leave it online and just add a message saying "This product is currently not available". If we do this, we will automatically re-activate about 500 products pages at once. 1. Just to make sure, is it harmful for SEO to keep activating/deactivating URLs this way? 2. Since most of these pages have been deindexed for a long time due to being redirected - have they lost all their SEO juice? 3. How can we better activate these old 500 pages - is it ok activating them all at once? Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | viatrading11 -
NoIndexing Massive Pages all at once: Good or bad?
If you have a site with a few thousand high quality and authoritative pages, and tens of thousands with search results and tags pages with thin content, and noindex,follow the thin content pages all at once, will google see this is a good or bad thing? I am only trying to do what Google guidelines suggest, but since I have so many pages index on my site, will throwing the noindex tag on ~80% of thin content pages negatively impact my site?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WebServiceConsulting.com0 -
Ending URLs in .html versus /
Hi there! Currently all the URLs on my website, even the home page, end it .html, such as http://www,consumerbase.com/index.html Is this bad?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Travis-W
Is there any benefit to this? Should I remove it and just have them end with a forward slash?
If I 301 redirect the old .html URLs to the forward slash URLs, will I lose PA? Thanks!0 -
301 redirect with /? in URL
For a Wordpress site that has the ending / in the URL with a ? after it... how can you do a 301 redirect to strip off anything after the / For example how to take this URL domain.com/article-name/?utm_source=feedburner and 301 to this URL domain.com/article-name/ Thank you for the help
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | COEDMediaGroup0 -
URL Structure for Directory Site
We have a directory that we're building and we're not sure if we should try to make each page an extension of the root domain or utilize sub-directories as users narrow down their selection. What is the best practice here for maximizing your SERP authority? Choice #1 - Hyphenated Architecture (no sub-folders): State Page /state/ City Page /city-state/ Business Page /business-city-state/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | knowyourbank
4) Location Page /locationname-city-state/ or.... Choice #2 - Using sub-folders on drill down: State Page /state/ City Page /state/city Business Page /state/city/business/
4) Location Page /locationname-city-state/ Again, just to clarify, I need help in determining what the best methodology is for achieving the greatest SEO benefits. Just by looking it would seem that choice #1 would work better because the URL's are very clear and SEF. But, at the same time it may be less intuitive for search. I'm not sure. What do you think?0 -
Is it safe to redirect multiple URLs to a single URL?
Hi, I have an old Wordress website with about 300-400 original pages of content on it. All relating to my company's industry: travel in Africa. It's a legitimate site with travel stories, photos, advice etc. Nothing spammy about. No adverts on it. No affiliates. The site hasn't been updated for a couple of years and we no longer have a need for it. Many of the stories on it are quite out of date. The site has built up a modest Mozrank value over the last 5 years, and has a few hundreds organically achieved inbound links. Recently I set up a swanky new branded website on ExpressionEngine on a new domain. My intention is to: Shut down the old site Focus all attention on building up content on the new website Ask the people linking to the old site to my new site instead (I wonder how many will actually do so...) Where possible, setup a 301 redirect from pages on the old site to their closest match on the new site Setup a 301 redirect from the old site's home page to new site's homepage Sounds good, right? But there is one issue I need some advice on... The old site has about 100 pages that do not have a good match on the new site. These pages are outdated or inferior quality, so it doesn't really make sense to rewrite them and put them on the new site. I call these my "black sheep pages". So... for these "black sheep pages" should I (A) redirect the urls to the new site's homepage (B) redirect the urls the old site's home page (which in turn, redirects to the new site's homepage, or (C) not redirect the urls, and let them die a lonely 404 death? OPTION A: oldsite.com/page1.php -> newsite.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AndreVanKets
oldsite.com/page2.php -> newsite.com
oldsite.com/page3.php -> newsite.com
oldsite.com/page4.php -> newsite.com
oldsite.com/page5.php -> newsite.com
oldsite.com -> newsite.com OPTION B: oldsite.com/page1.php -> oldsite.com
oldsite.com/page2.php -> oldsite.com
oldsite.com/page3.php -> oldsite.com
oldsite.com/page4.php -> oldsite.com
oldsite.com/page5.php -> oldsite.com
oldsite.com -> newsite.com OPTION 😄 oldsite.com/page1.php : do not redirect, let page 404 and disappear forever
oldsite.com/page2.php : do not redirect, let page 404 and disappear forever
oldsite.com/page3.php : do not redirect, let page 404 and disappear forever
oldsite.com/page4.php : do not redirect, let page 404 and disappear forever
oldsite.com/page5.php : do not redirect, let page 404 and disappear forever
oldsite.com -> newsite.com My intuition tells me that Option A would pass the most "link juice" to my new site, but I am concerned that it could also be seen by Google as a spammy redirect technique. What would you do? Help 😐1 -
Htaccess Redirect with %C2%A0 in URL
Below is my setup for redirects in .htaccess file in my root word press installation. The www to non-www works well, so no problems there Other page redirects work well, too (example: redirect 301 /some-page/ http://mysite.com/another-page/ (I didn't post those because I have a few too many : ) So here it goes... RewriteEngine On
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pepsimoz
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.mysite.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://mysite.com/$1 [R=301,L] BEGIN WordPress <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]</ifmodule> END WordPress redirect 301 /archives/10-college- majors/ http://mysite.com/archives/10-college-majors/ redirect 301 /archives/10-college-%20majors/ http://mysite.com/archives/10-college-majors/ redirect 301 /archives/10-college-%C2%A0majors/ http://mysite.com/archives/10-college-majors/ I'm having a problem with the last 301 redirect: redirect 301 /archives/10-college-%C2%A0majors/ http://mysite.com/archives/10-college-majors/ not working... As you can see I've tried using other varations of the "space" but no go. I also used a redirect in cPanel's Redirect screen; testing all the possible options + wildcard I've also tried this: http://serverfault.com/questions/201829/using-special-characters-in-apache-mod-rewrite-rule (perhaps unsuccessfully, because it caused a 500 server error and it's a different situation in my case) I also saw something here: http://www.webmasterworld.com/apache/3908682.htm but I don't know if it works and how I would implement that + do so without compromising ALL other redirects. Note: the URL displays with a space in the address bar of all major web browsers: http://mysite.com/10-college- majors/ and goes to a 404 page I have a goregous page / PR6 / high authority site linking to the URL on my site, but they copied the URL with a space somehow. I contacted the person responsible for the website and he claims it works fine (aka he didn't check it). Is there a clean way to redirect ONLY this problematic URL without compromising other redirects, etc? Any ideas would be great. I'll respond with progress. Thanks in advance. UPDATE the redirect works, and it did work. Even so, when looking at source of page linking to mine, the URL looks like this: ``` http://mysite.com/archives/10-college- majors/ Clicking the URL in Source View in FireFox takes me to ``` http://mysite.com/archives/10-college-%C2%A0majors/ none of my 301 redirects should direct there. I don't have any redirect plugins either.0