Hyphen Vs Underscore in page names

I've seen a few debates recently about using - or _ in page names. Some people debate that an _ is not recognised as a space then making keyword terms using this useless. Personally I use a - as I think an _ is at best a grey area, so I've decided to test this as best as possible.

I've created 7 pages all with a nonsense two word keyword term. On page optimisation is the same for all pages. Three use a - and three use an _. On the final page I've not included the keyword term on the page at all, just in the page name. I've used an _ in the name to see if google pick up the keyword at all.

If anyone is interested I'll post the results here. Also if anyone has any suggestions just let me know.

 

The pages should not have your "nonsense two word keyword term" in them to avoid perturbation of the results and the actual result will depend on how you link to the pages . To conduct your experiment you need six pages, three named with the hyphen and three with the underscore and for each triplet you need one link with the hyphen in the anchor text, one with the underscore in the anchor text and one with neither in the anchor text.

- Michael

 

I think GoogleGuy suggested a hyphen was the best option, since they are recognised as word delimiters. The thread by GoogleGuy is somewhere at WMW.

 

I'm not so sure if any SE actually favors URL string with hyphen, but one reason why I'd still like to use hyphen is that, if and when the url is referenced, it automatically creates nice anchor text.