Hypens ..

[lemon]

Chris, in your opinion, for naming of pages ... using of hypens or underscores, which is better for google seo?

example:
lemon_juice.htm
or
lemon-juice.htm

[Chris]

hyphens... Google, for whatever odd reason, doesn't parse underscores as spaces (atleast last I checked). This is something I only just figured out a couple months ago when I did some tests.

[lemon]

Thanks for the tip!

I noticed for website-templates.net, you use underscore ... any special reason?

[Chris]

Because I made that site before I discovered this issue.

[lemon]

There are still so many people preaching that underscores are better ... sometimes I wonder how those "experts" come up with their weird theories ...

[Mike]

If you do use underscores, do you think it's worth changing them all?

[Chris]

On an established site, no. But if your site is brand new without any incoming links yet then you might as well.

[Mike]

Oh, forgot about that.

If I changed everything all the links in google would be broken

Do you think when I have finished tweaking everything (including changing names), I should resubmit to google?

Thanks,
Mike

[Chris]

I always submit after making a major change like that.

[Mike]

Ah...ok.

Will it change all the names to their "new" names then?

Thanks,
Mike

[Chris]

After a crawl and an update, yes.

[Mike]

Thanks for the help...

[Mike]

By the way, is it against their TOS to submit your site more than once?

I'm sure I read it once, but can't find it now...

[Chris]

Its not.