If you have an html or graphic file that has more than one word for a file name do you put a:

space between both: file name.html
hypen file-name.gif
underscore file_name.gpj

Which method do you recommend?

personally i capatalise the words and leave them together (e.g. myPictureFile.jpg) same thing with variables in code.

I dont think theres any real advantage from different ways, but i wouldn't recommend spaces.

I usually use underscore.
Like stoot98, I wouldn't recommend spaces as well.

Stay away from spaces! As far as naming goes, you just have to use whatever makes sense to you. Just be consistent in how you name things. For me, all graphical elements on my sites are separated with underscores. If I use a photo on a site, it gets all combined like Stoot98 does.

Just pick what makes sense to you and stick with it.

I always use hyphens since that's the best for search engines.

A search engine sees myImageFile as one word. It also sees my_image_file as one word. I prefer they see each word and only hyphens will ensure that.

Also with underscores, while it may not make a big difference in image paths it will make a difference in links and urls that people see. The underscore can often get hidden and look like a space and possible lead to people trying to use the wrong url to find your page.

Originally Posted by vangogh

A search engine sees myImageFile as one word. It also sees my_image_file as one word. I prefer they see each word and only hyphens will ensure that.

I did not know that. Thanks for that little tip.

Glad to help. Here's a post from Matt Cutts on using dashes and underscores. It's a year and a half old, but I believe the situation is still the same.

Not to competite with Vangogh / Matt Cutts

This article "visually" shows what is the difference between hyphen, underscore and conjoin.
Keywords In Urls

And John Scott of V7N
http://www.internet-marketing-blog.c...words-in-urls/

I think both articles show that Google sees it just like I said. If you want your url to be seen as separate words in Google then you need to use a hyphen. Yahoo and MSN may or may not be able to parse the individual words with either the underscore or when run together, but Google doesn't.

I'm not sure why they can't becuase it seems like something they should be able to do, but for the moment if you want Google to see the individual words in your url you need to use a dash between the words.

I didn't see anything in either article that goes against that.

I agree. I just posted it coz the first article has SERP images which clearly shows whatz the advantage of using hypens over underscore and conjoined. And I, myself, using hypens. I love articles with images which explain theory, because of lack of english fluency. (Myself)

I thought both were good articles. I did my own rather informal experiment a few months back. Does keyword1keyword2.com = keyword1-keyword2.com?

I was looking more at words combined into one and separated by dashes and my experiment was little more than a few searches at Google. I came to the same conclusion though.

everything is fine except space, in term of search engine friendly better to avoid any space in any of your file..for domain name im still not using dash, so im not sure the effect toward your keyword.

Thank you all for your replys.

I think I'l stick with hyphens/ dashes/ minus signs because they are easier to see and "Google friendly"