Google & Separators

[Dan-Petrovic]

This is not a question but something to share. If you click on all of these links and compare the results you will see why _ is not a good thing to have in your URLs.

• http://www.google.com/search?q=blue
• http://www.google.com/search?q=b.l.u.e
• http://www.google.com/search?q=b-l-u-e
• http://www.google.com/search?q=b_l_u_e
• http://www.google.com/search?q=b%20l%20u%20e

If you have any other examples of working separators please comment.

[SteveOllington]

How interesting. Why do you think the underscores bring video results above, making the serps mismatch all the others?

[Dan-Petrovic]

954 underscores in the source code of the first result? God knows. I suspect maybe comment material has lots of underscore_usernames/

[SteveOllington]

Ahhh of course... that's pretty cool. And the video file/save names possibly do have too. That's a quality experiment, you should expand it and do a YouMoz post!

[Thos003]

Very interesting. I was just told the other day not use underscores in my image names... which I have done a lot. But my images seem to rank very well.

Did you note that Wikipedia actually has underscores in their site links? Found on all the variations above.

Also noted that I got local results with all but B_L_U_E_

When doing the search for P_E_S_T_  I found similar video and image results

http://www.google.com/search?q=b-l-u-e#hl=en&sugexp=ldymls&pq=p-e-s-t-&xhr=t&q=p_e_s_t_&cp=9&pf=p&sclient=psy&source=hp&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=p_e_s_t_+&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=822bf32b5c0e0691

But doing the search for p_e_s_t_c_o_n_t_r_o_l _ did not give me image results.

http://www.google.com/search?q=b%20l%20u%20e#sclient=psy&hl=en&source=hp&q=p_e_s_t_c_o_n_t_r_o_l+_&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=822bf32b5c0e0691

Why would long tail be different?

Fun one to add:

http://www.google.com/search?q=b_l_u_e#sclient=psy&hl=en&source=hp&q=b_l_u_e_++moon&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=822bf32b5c0e0691

http://www.google.com/search?q=b_l_u_e#hl=en&sugexp=ldymls&pq=b_l_u_e_%20%20moon&xhr=t&q=b_l_u_e_+m-o-o-n&cp=16&pf=p&sclient=psy&source=hp&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=b_l_u_e_+m-o-o-n&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=822bf32b5c0e0691

http://www.google.com/search?q=b_l_u_e#sclient=psy&hl=en&source=hp&q=b_l_u_e_+M_o_o_n_&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=822bf32b5c0e0691

Again no local results for me on the last one, but yes on the prior two.

Thanks for sharing.

[Dan-Petrovic]

Strange, no local results for me. Only videos in one case or clean serps in all others. My guess is that it's location based.

[Thos003]

You're searching from Australia? That is interesting.

If I take off the location, using United States as my location, I don't get local results either.

[Dan-Petrovic]

Yes Australia. Didn't use any proxies.

[Thos003]

I have not tried it with proxies yet. The first test was from a Charlotte NC location. In the US you can change your location within Google's search. If you change it to United States you get what use to be the US results minus the localization. So you typically don't get maps when doing a search with the location set as United States.

I was using proxies to check results from different locals in the united states but found that simply changing my location via their location setting gave me the same results as the proxy from that location. But from what I understand, in Canada they don't give you the option to change your location. Is the same true in Australia?

If you look at this image you will find a "Change Location" above the map.

http://pestcontrolseo.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/pestcontrol_search.gif

[SteveOllington]

You probably already know this but there's a FF plugin called Google Global which you can use to search from other places if you wanted to check the differences easily