Underscores and Dashes are NOT Yet the Same

You may have heard or read the buzz about Google reading underscores the same way they read dashes generated by a recent CNet column. (That would mean an underscore would be read as a space when Google spiders a URL.) Before you get too excited, you need to know that Matt has included an update on this news at his blog spelling things out a little more clearly.

He writes:

If you read Stephan Spencer's write-up, he says that underscores are the same as dashes to Google now, and I didn't quite say that in the talk. I said that we had someone looking at that now. So I wouldn't consider it a completely done deal at this point. But note that I also said if you'd already made your site with underscores, it probably wasn't worth trying to migrate all your urls over to dashes. If you're starting fresh, I'd still pick dashes.

So don't go rushing out to celebrate just yet if your site is currently relying on underscores instead of dashes. Just know that change is likely coming along sometime soon.