Does Google recognize underscopes "_" as word separators?

I had one support case regarding this question where I spent a lot of time searching the info. Now I am going to share the answer here.

So i answer your question in the next sentence ;)

Underscores are seen by Google as word separators just like hyphens.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9748779-7.html

But Google recommends to use dashes...

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=76329&topic=15261

Search engine optimization? Keyword rich URLs are a very, very minor factor in Google's ranking algorithm. But as we all know there is not one thing that is going to make a page rank well... there are hundreds of things that must be done to rank well for a particular term. It is the sum of all of those things that make you rank. Google has always been pretty good at breaking down domain names and page names like mortgagerefinanceloans.html into "mortgage refinance loans" even without any type of word separator.

Ok, let's go to Google and let's search for "dogtraining", "dog training", "dog-training", "dog_training".

First 3 search queries showed us almost the same result. As you see in the beginning of results there is Wikipedia topic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_training ). Take a look to wiki URL, they also use underlines. As this wiki page have been found with our search queries means, that underlines in page names are the same as separators.

So let's discuss our 4th query "dog_training". Why normal human should build search query as mortgage_refinance_loans? As you maybe know, PHP functions use underlines. So when we search for "dog_training" Google tries to find PHP function dog_training() instead of all search results for "dog training". So these underlines are used as symbols only in search queries.

I hope I answered your question.

Activation problem with Adobe CS3 Design Pemium

It seems that only I had issues with Creative Suite 3 activation on 64 bit workstations :)

Googling the internet have not give any workable solution.

During the installation there is once being asked AdobePDF.dll file that is located under C:\WINDOWS\SysWOW64. After installation completes successfully and usually at the first run of any CS3 product there should appear registration window where you are prompted to register or evaluate 30-day version of product.

But what I’ve got during the first run – nothing :). CS3 application was halted and it was needed to close it from task manager. Restart also was not helpable. Every time I tried to run CS3 - it halted.

So I discovered windows service named “Adobe Version Cue CS3”. After I have started it my CS3 got to work!

But no any registration forms had appeared and also it was unable to register the product from menu, because buttons were deactivated even if “FLEXnet Licensing Service” was running (see the pic below):

It was hard to say that CS3 was workable: If you close any of CS3 application - it halted. Also Acrobat was not workable. For reading PDF files it was necessary to install Acrobat Reader separately. Because Adobe Acrobat was halted every time you run it. Also strange thing that there was no 30-day trial period (as one of ours designers was worked with it for 3 months without activation, once I opened C# file on his PC and it called DreamWeaver applicationafter and after somehow appeared activation window. So I caught the moment and registered the product. The same I tried 100 times on free Win XP 64 PC – no luck). Strange thing that if you install any of CS3 stand alone product, like Adobe Photoshop it worked nice. But we have no CD-KEYs to activate stand alone CS3 products…

I’ve tried a lot of tricks:

• Tried to update CS3 to the latest version. There was possibility to update it from Adobe ExtendScript Toolkit 2 application. As there was Updates menu item avaible, but Adobe ExtendScript Toolkit 2 is not allowing you to register or activate the whole product. No change after updating
  


• Tried to run CS3 Design Premium from Safe Mode, but FLEXnet Licensing Service is not runnable under Safe Mode. So I’ve got error message that "Licensing for this product has stopped working. You cannot use this product at this time. You must repair the problem by uninstalling and then reinstalling this product or contacting your IT administrator or Adobe customer support for help."
  


• Tried to install CS3 Design Premium on fresh Win XP 64 installation – the same.
  


• Tried Silent Install with CD-KEY defined in application.xml.override file: http://www.adobe.com/support/deployment/cs3_deployment.pdf. But in the end of installation it was interrupted with error message “Exit code: 6 Silent workflow completed with errors”. After that it was very hard to rerun setup even if I cleared installation with CS3 clean script http://www.adobe.com/support/contact/cs3clean.html

So finally I’ve found the solution for activation from here:

http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=kb401528&sliceId=1

Under that link you will find LicenseRecovery109.zip file what has License Service Update inside. After I run it and restarted CS3 – hallelujah!!! :) Registration window had appeared and I successfully activated the product! After that there were no more halts during closing the CS3 applications or running Adobe Acrobat. Our new designer should be happy now ;)