Hi All,

Anyone got a definitive answer on this one? I wish I could use dashes but can't. Any more advice on this would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Hey George,

Problem is that I can't use hyphens (-) and need an alternative... Unless you mean dashes like mdash and ndash? (i.e. – and —) Wasn't sure if those characters were okay for URLs and whether they are recognized as separators by google...

Thanks, Davinia. Didn't want to introduce too much complexity to the problem but the issue is that our devs already have a series of rules in place where the hyphen carries special meaning, so I'm gonna have to work under those constraints...

Hi There,

We are in the process of revamping our URL structure and my devs tell me they have a technical problem using a hyphen as a word separator. There's a whole lot of competing recommendations out there and at this point I'm just confused.

Does anyone have any idea what character would be next-best to the hyphen for separating words in a URL? Any reason to prefer one over another?

Some links I've found discussing the topic:

• This page says that "__Google has confirmed that the point (.), the comma (,) and the hyphen (-) are valid word separators in URL’s.": http://www.internetofficer.com/seo/google-word-separator/
• This page suggests the plus (+) symbol would be best: http://labs.phurix.net/posts/word-separators-in-urls
• This guy says he's tested and there's a whole bunch of symbols that will work as word separators: http://www.webproguide.com/articles/Symbols-as-word-separators-a-look-inside-the-search-engine-logic/

I'm leaning towards the tilde (~) or the plus (+) sign. Usage would be like so: http://www.domain.com/shop/sterling~silver OR /shop/sterling+silver etc...

Thanks in advance for your help!

Quick follow-up question: Does google treat the phrases "half" and "1/2" as the same?

Hi There,

We're in the process of changing our URL structure to be more SEO friendly. Right now I'm struggling to find a good way to handle slashes that are part of a targeted keyword.

For example, if I have a product page and my product title is "1/2 ct Diamond Earrings in 14K Gold" which of the following URLs is the right way to go if I'm targeting the product title as the search keyword?

1. example.com/jewelry/1-2-ct-diamond-earrings-in-14k-gold
2. example.com/jewelry/12-ct-diamond-earrings-in-14k-gold
3. example.com/jewelry/1_2-ct-diamond-earrings-in-14k-gold
4. example.com/jewelry/1%2F2-ct-diamond-earrings-in-14k-gold

Thanks!