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Removing dashes in our URLs?
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Hi Forum,
Our site has an errant product review module that is resulting in about 9-10 404 errors per day on Google Webmaster Tools. We've found that by changing our product page URLs to only include 2 dashes, the module stops causing 404 errors for that page.
Does changing our URL from "oursite.com/girls-pink-yoga-capri.html" to "oursite.com/girlspink-yoga-capri.html" hurt our SEO for a search for "girls pink yoga capri"? If so, by how much (assuming everthing else on the page is optimized properly)
Thanks for your input.
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I would dich the module and get one that works
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But the URL is just a small factor in the greater scheme of things, and for humans, having a readable title tag would influence the CTR so much more than the URL missing a dash.
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It shouldn't; search engines can isolate strings without separators. However, how many people do you think actually type 'girls pink yoga capri' or are you just being hypothetical?

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