What to do about spaces in my links ?

[jekko]

My design includes dynamic (php) links

eg: from the name "David Franklyn", I get the link

<a href="www.mysite/David Franklyn/sports/Franklyn.html">David Franklyn</a>

What would be the best way to deal with the spaces ?

(PS I took the ".com" off so that this forum s/w didn't turn it into a link.)

From a SEO point of view:

Is it best to use rawurlencode() to convert
the spaces to "%20" or to replace with an underscore
or a dash or a period ?


Thanks for any advice

[canassassin]

can't say im an expert on this kind of stuff, but when work on things like this, i generally turn spaces into dashes. Just a personal preference but i don't know whether or not it makes a big difference. I tend to steer away from %20 because it can confuse novice visitors who wanted to type in the url directly.

My two cents.

[SecondSighting]

dashes would be best from an SEO perspective, followed by underscores. they probably equate to the same thing.

[plugandplay]

i generally turn spaces into dashes

that's what I do as well, the other option would be just to delete the space (ie. DerekFranlin)

[ReadingBuddy]

I've seen recommendations on several forums that dashes will serve you better than underscores. They also require your user to type fewer keystrokes.

[jj1]

i generally turn spaces into dashes

I also use dashes but notice in Google adwords (presumably a Google site?) that they just take out the spaces.

[bondguy]

Dashes may help the search engines distinguish words better.

[Pistolero]

I prefer underscores. Also, since you have 39 posts you can put links in now =)