Best URL format Help

**Sir P** · 01-27-2008, 06:26 AM

Hello,

Thought I might run this by you guys before I do it...

Building up a new website that sends band names in the url like this...

Quote:

www.domain.com/band name here
eg: www.domain.com/the eagles

Thought obviously browser automatically add %20 so they turn into ...

Quote:

www.domain.com/the%20eagles

Do you guys know how search engines deal with that when crawling? Now I could replace all spaces with a hypen or underline, which do you guys think is best?

Many thanks
Sir P

**ssandecki** · 01-27-2008, 10:14 AM

http://www.domain.com/the-eagles/ would be the best method, try to avoid underscores as dashes appear to be the better option these days.

**chrishirst** · 01-27-2008, 12:23 PM

dot (period) "." or dash "-"

**carloncho** · 01-27-2008, 02:02 PM

If you use the space (%20) not is the best way to "SEO" practices. I read that theunderscores "_" too, but i don´t sure. The better way ir "-" or ".". I prefer "-".

**chrishirst** · 01-27-2008, 02:27 PM

just forget "SEO practices" etc
and think about THE END USERS! you know the one with credit cards who may come and buy something from you.

Having spaces in URLs encoded as %20 can occasionally cause problems with some browsers and some servers, it doesn't happen often but when it does, links fail to work and you could lose potential customers.

**qwert04** · 01-28-2008, 02:03 AM

Thanks for the tip.

**datasolutioninc** · 01-28-2008, 02:18 AM

You use www.domain.com/the-eagles best for your site but you use space (%20) this is not for your site.

**Brandon_9** · 01-30-2008, 12:26 PM

Hello, this was the right thing that you have done. I don’t think that you were wrong.
All the best!

**Sir P** · 02-01-2008, 07:47 AM

Ok many thanks to everyone for their help with this

**swaplinks** · 02-06-2008, 06:03 AM

Hi,

It's better to have hyphen (-) in between the url instead of underscore (_). It helps more in search engine rankings.

Regards,
Swap Links.