: SEO friendly URL: hyphen vs forward slash For example, I have a webshop where each product has its unique ID and I want to build SEO friendly URL for a product page. An old-school way that
For example, I have a webshop where each product has its unique ID and I want to build SEO friendly URL for a product page.
An old-school way that is mentioned almost in every article looks like this: mywebshop.com/categoryname/1111-some_product_name where
1111 is ID of the product and is important
some_product_name is just for google and users; changing this text to "some_other_product_name" will not have any effect
But some websites (including StackOverflow) uses different format and build URLs like: mywebshop.com/categoryname/1111/some_product_name
So, my question is which URL is better from search engine point of view? mywebshop.com/categoryname/1111-some_product_name OR mywebshop.com/categoryname/1111/some_product_name? Is there any reason why forward slash should be used instead of hyphen?
From implementation point of view there is not so much difference. Also, for the end-users they look identical.
UPDATE 2017-03-02 @John Conde: this is not the duplicate. The link that you provided explains how to structure URL if you have hierarchy of entities.
I agree that my question looks similar, but in my case I have parts of the URL that will never be part of user's search phrase (i.e., nobody will try to search for "1111", users type in product name).
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Google, at least, will consider a name with a hyphen in it as part of the whole. In other words, the name of a product with a URI of "1111-product" will become "1111 product". So, it would make more sense to use a URI with the actual product name followed by any variation of the name or product: "/product/1111".
That can then be thought of product ID 1111. If you come out with a new variation or model of that product, it can have an URI of /product/2222.
This is actually how we do things in a REST methodology.
I would not use underscores. Use hyphens for the reason I gave above. Google considers hyphens to be spaces in listings while underscores are not (if I recall correctly).
In addition, underscores are often missed in the address bar cause they're harder to see.
There are other reasons for not using underscores that I just don't recall right now but I abandoned any thoughts of using them 10 years ago.
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