Internet Marketing

Stephan Spencer, from CNET’s News Blog, posted an informative entry about a few updates that are taking place with Google’s search algorithm. Of particular interest was the news from Matt Cutts regarding underscores in URLs. Traditionally, underscores were treated differently from hyphens.

Hyphens have long been the preferred method for dividing keywords up in a link. Whereas, URLs with keywords separated by underscores have been ignored by Google — they would only view it as a phrase. Matt Cutts, software engineer on Google’s Webspam team, has stated that keywords separated with underscores are now treated the same as keywords separated with hyphens. This is big news for SEO firms and businesses that have been using underscores and didn’t want to re-write URLs just to adapt to Google’s preferences.

Matt also claims that Google now treats URLs with a query string the same as static URLs. (As long as there are no more than two or three parameters in the URL) In other words, you shouldn’t take a hit in your Google position ranks if you have a question mark in your URL; just try not to have more than two or three equals signs in the URL.

Cutts stated that the number of slashes in your URL (i.e. the number of directories deep your page is) isn’t a factor in your Google rankings. He went on to say that although it doesn’t matter for Google, it is rumored to matter for Yahoo and MSN (Live Search). Matt addressed this because Spencer specifically asked the question from the audience.

According to Matt, the file extension in your URL won’t affect your rankings. So it’s inconsequential whether you use .php, .html, .htm, .asp, .aspx, .jsp etc. The one extension you should avoid for your Web documents? .exe.

Matt stated it was “myth” that Google uses its status as a domain registrar to access domain registration data to use it as a ranking signal. According to Matt, being a registrar doesn’t grant one special access to other registrars’ customer data. Note that Matt didn’t state whether Google is or isn’t using WHOIS data as a signal. I think they are still giving rank preference for older websites.

When asked about how to get one’s blog into Google News, Matt shared one of Google’s requirements for inclusion: The blog must have multiple authors. (Darnit!)

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