Spaces, Underscores & Dashes - How to name pictures

[GILSAN]

What is the correct way of naming pictures for use on webpages?

San Francisco Bridge (spaces)
San_Francisco_Bridge (underscore with Upper + Lower case)
san_francisco_bridge (underscore + Lower case only)
San-Francisco-Bridge (dashes with Upper + Lower case)
san-francisco-bridge (dashes + Lower case only)

 

[deleted984054565403]

I personally go for Option 3 - underscores and lowercase. :imho:

You don't have to guess the capitalization of words, and underscores do a better job at separating words (there are lots of hyphenated words).

 

[GILSAN]

Thanks Steve.

 

[shockie]

there isn't that big of a difference between those options, but i stick with lowercase and dashes (the last option). the same goes for other types of files and pages.

hardcore programmers may prefer using camel notation (i.e., sanFransiscoBridge).

 

[GILSAN]

there isn't that big of a difference between those options, but i stick with lowercase and dashes (the last option). the same goes for other types of files and pages.

hardcore programmers may prefer using camel notation (i.e., sanFransiscoBridge).

Which is best for Search Engines? dashes or underscore?

 

[shockie]

i believe that in this day and age, either is fine and treated the same. in fact, i would say that the major search engines can easily distinguish and find keywords even if there aren't any dashes or underscores.

 

[GILSAN]

Thanks shockie

 

[Hive]

san_francisco_bridge imo

 

[Makis.TV]

i was using both dashes and underscores in lowercase and at the same time i asked google to include me in the google image search
results were that underscored image file names were indexed more than the dashed

 

[enlytend]

Historically, underscores USED to get the connected words indexed as one word while hyphens indexed them as separate words. For example:

word1_word2 = would show in searches for "word1 word2".
word1-word2 = would show in searches for "word1", "word2" AND "word1 word2"

That was changed about 1.5 years ago and underscores get better treatment these days, however most people speculate that hyphens still hold a slight edge.

 

[dmi]

The last option is what I would choose -- dashes, lowercase.

 

[GILSAN]

To dash or to underscore; that is the question. So far, it seems like underscore has a slight lead.