Domain names with hyphens ('-')

turgon

What are people thoughts on domain names with hyphens. For example www.book-shop.net as opposed to www.bookshop.net.

Will it end up in less people coming to your site, as they will forget about the hyphens??

mneylon

Hyphens are a bad idea in general

Feelgood

Yep they are an awful idea when it comes to domain names...

Bluefrog

I say hyphens are an unnecessary complication so avoid them if you can - here is my reasoning.

There are a few factors to consider. In order of priority in my opinion they would be;

Can you reasonably expect that a search engine will be able to parse out the individual words in your domain without the help of the hyphens? There is a lot of benefit to having your site keywords in the domain from the SEO point of view and if you don't get your SEO right then usability will have a less dramatic effect because very few will end up using your site. All the major search engines now can do a good job of separating out words in most cases without separator characters like hyphens but if there are multiple possibilities for splitting the words search engines will see the name as more ambiguous and at least some of the benefit of having the keywords in the domain will be lost.

In terms of usability hyphens can improve legibility but can also introduce confusion - users may easily omit them and end up on a site offering competing goods or services. Also, domain names with hyphens are more difficult to communicate orally. You can address the legibility issue by simply capitalising the first letter of each word in marketing material etc.

Finally, obviously if you are choosing the domain name based on a brand name and the brand name is hyphenated then you would have a valid case for including the hyphen but these cases are rare.

stapolinhosting

Yup, there not the best idea at all. Not because of seo cause search engines will egnore them when looking for keywords in the domain name.

They are just an anoyance when trying to remember to use them while looking for a website, you can end up at someone elses site instead, of course that looses you good hits on your site.

notnem

Can you register both the hyphened and non hyphened one and redirect traffic from one to another using a 301 redirect? That way if you wanted to buy use the hyphened one you could also captitalise on otherwise lost type in traffic.

Saruman

I think some people use hyphens because their own domain name is taken.
It is a bad idea although you can always as notnem said, buy it and then register one without the hyphen.

Sleipnir

Yeah usually it's a bad idea to deviate from words only unless you can't get your name without hyphens. Unless you pay Google a fortune to appear on 1st page search results.

You hear ads on the radio where the name is different e.g. the ads for "Shomera" on Newstalk where they said ;
"visit our website, like the irish word for room, only spelt differently. S-H-E-O-M-R-A"

Saruman

Sleipnir wrote: »

"visit our website, like the irish word for room, only spelt differently. S-H-E-O-M-R-A"

I hope they did not include the hyphen after each letter

My brother in laws wife registered a domain with a hyphen in it so i could throw up a website for her. In her case it is only a portfolio site so potential employers can see her work so she does not need web traffic from google etc.

Pablo

In certain countries, like Germany, they are accustomed to using hyphens. But normally I would recommend people avoid them.

You can always write your domain in advertising like BookShop.net to aid people to pronounce the words, or figure out what you do.

randomer

I like to work on the principal that you should be able to tell someone your domain name over the phone without having to repeat yourself or spell the domain name.

Hyphens are evil. Shomera is a really good example of how not to do it.

There were some funny domains I remember seeing a few years ago. Pen Island dot com was one of them

stapolinhosting

Pablo wrote: »

You can always write your domain in advertising like BookShop.net to aid people to pronounce the words, or figure out what you do.

oh, thats a good idea.

Saruman

I just head this site advertiesed on the radio this morning.
www.radio-awards.net

jmcc

turgon wrote: »

What are people thoughts on domain names with hyphens. For example www.book-shop.net as opposed to www.bookshop.net.

Will it end up in less people coming to your site, as they will forget about the hyphens??

Very bad idea. A website with a hyphenated domain will leak traffic to a website with the non-hyphenated version. And people do not think in hyphens.

Regards...jmcc

fergal_d

turgon wrote: »

What are people thoughts on domain names with hyphens. For example www.book-shop.net as opposed to www.bookshop.net.

Will it end up in less people coming to your site, as they will forget about the hyphens??

I have a hyphen in my domain name, They don't matter if you have your site properly SEO'd for you desired keyword, coz people will just search for the keyword again and find your site again...

I have a hyphen in my site address, working on SEO now

blue4ever

fergal_d wrote: »

I have a hyphen in my domain name, They don't matter if you have your site properly SEO'd for you desired keyword, coz people will just search for the keyword again and find your site again...

I have a hyphen in my site address, working on SEO now

Funny thing but.. Google suggest that it prefers hyphens as opposed to the underscore (which is rife in programming possibly): www.book-shop.net as opposed to www.bookshop.net, Google and search engines will parse the former and haven't a clue about the latter - its a collection of letters. The hyphen at least gives it a 'rational' to undo the hyphen, esp in a domain name.

How many hyphenated words appear a) on a daily basis in written English b) in URL's. Therefore the drive in search engines has to be to parse the hyphen at least as a second option. Plus their semantic and linguistic programming will be able to dig them out in parsing some of the domain names.

fergal_d

blue4ever wrote: »

Funny thing but.. Google suggest that it prefers hyphens as opposed to the underscore (which is rife in programming possibly): www.book-shop.net as opposed to www.bookshop.net, Google and search engines will parse the former and haven't a clue about the latter - its a collection of letters. The hyphen at least gives it a 'rational' to undo the hyphen, esp in a domain name.

How many hyphenated words appear a) on a daily basis in written English b) in URL's. Therefore the drive in search engines has to be to parse the hyphen at least as a second option. Plus their semantic and linguistic programming will be able to dig them out in parsing some of the domain names.

Sweet... Never knew that, but certainly makes sense

jmcc

blue4ever wrote: »

Funny thing but.. Google suggest that it prefers hyphens as opposed to the underscore (which is rife in programming possibly):

There is no underscore character in domain names. I'm not sure that you understand how search engines work.

Regards...jmcc

blue4ever

jmcc wrote: »

There is no underscore character in domain names. I'm not sure that you understand how search engines work.

Regards...jmcc

Funny I do -
but, anyway, I picked that up slightly differently. I have moved it to URL's so alpos for that.

jmcc

blue4ever wrote: »

Funny I do -
but, anyway, I picked that up slightly differently. I have moved it to URL's so alpos for that.

It was meant the way I wrote it. I don't think that you understand how search engines work. Specifically this is the basis for my opinion:

Funny thing but.. Google suggest that it prefers hyphens as opposed to the underscore (which is rife in programming possibly): www.book-shop.net as opposed to www.bookshop.net, Google and search engines will parse the former and haven't a clue about the latter - its a collection of letters. The hyphen at least gives it a 'rational' to undo the hyphen, esp in a domain name.

Keyword parsing the domain name has been a part of search engine algorithms since the early 1990s. This is the basis for domain names being targeted and registered because they contain keywords. The unhyphenated version of a domain will typically be worth more than hyphenated version.

From the .com zonefile of 01/January/2009, there were 5211783 distinct domains beginning with the letter 'A'. Of these 687471 had one or more hyphens. The number of non-hyphenated 'A' domains was 4524312. I could do the figures for all com/net/org/biz/info/etc but the same pattern of non-hyphenation dominance covers all major TLDs.

People do not think in hyphens. Hyphens fail the phone test (can you tell a person the domain name on the phone and will they understand it and get it right?).

Regards...jmcc

blue4ever

If you want me to get up on the fcuking cross, your're giving me a decent leg up.

I said I misread the post and began discussing URL's (partially because i am doing some work on hyphens in URL's and ranking).

So - least you should think I an a shrinking violet - let me say this again - I misread it.

Will that satisfy you.

RedCardinal

blue4ever wrote: »

Funny thing but.. Google suggest that it prefers hyphens as opposed to the underscore (which is rife in programming possibly): www.book-shop.net as opposed to www.bookshop.net, Google and search engines will parse the former and haven't a clue about the latter - its a collection of letters. The hyphen at least gives it a 'rational' to undo the hyphen, esp in a domain name.

How many hyphenated words appear a) on a daily basis in written English b) in URL's. Therefore the drive in search engines has to be to parse the hyphen at least as a second option. Plus their semantic and linguistic programming will be able to dig them out in parsing some of the domain names.

Misread or not, you're completely wrong about Google preferring domains with hyphens. Please link to the appropriate official guideline that you are referring to.

Google prefers hyphens to underscores in URIs (not URLs), but it is documented that Google does not like hyphens in domain names, especially if you have 2 or more of them.

blue4ever

Actually true – it never actually states it.
However three things;
1)Ever time Google give suggestions advice on say perhaps Dynamic URL’s – although it says it ok and it can handle them – it sites if you are going to change them – it always expresses it URS’s hyphenated if it has to, ad so do it’s spokes people.
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/guest-post-vanessa-fox-on-organic-site-review-session/

Look through it SEO guide – none of the URL’s are “_” all “–“ so I will err on the side of caution.

2)Many of the tests conducted that URL’s with underscores performed better: I will site an example – but now in am on way to meeting

Lastly:

Quote:
No, neither am I [convinced that they are treated equally]. And Google has stated that underscores and dashes are not treated equally, although they have plans (already in place?) to change this
Dashes currently get my vote - treated as word boundaries by Google, and easier to read for humans


http://groups.google.com/group/Google_Webmaster_Help-Tools/browse_thread/thread/c7eec41ae012bc12/130cb19f07d04797


So WTF are you digging at me for the exact same conclusion


Out of here and not getting into a bun fight - apols for the misread - leave it there.

fergal_d

If you want me to get up on the fcuking cross, your're giving me a decent leg up

LOLOLOL

Well my site has a hyphen... I made it last Monday and it is not on page 40 of google for the keyword I selected which is ok since I only made it last week... Give me about 4 years and I'll be on page 1 lol

Guys, quit your bickering... and help me out with some SEO techniques, or even better, let me know what is the best software to get to page 1

here is my site www.wealthyaffiliate-reviewer.com

Trojan

If you use hyphens you don't get an "exact match" bonus in SE's.

My simple rule of thumb on domain names is that it should be pronouncable, unique and memorable enough that someone can hear it said ONCE on the radio and remember it.

To take some of my domains as examples from worst to best:

sportcrazy.net - 2 strikes against 1) because people pluralise the sportscrazy, 2) and .com would be far better than .net

amdsoft.com - was initially poor when I set it up years ago, since the (completely unrelated) tech company AMD grew more people are familiar with the letters grouped.

websitedoctor.com - not bad - 1 strike against is that people call it webdoctor.com sometimes.

logon.ie - very good in the Irish market where .IE is known, very happy with this choice

And after all that, don't forget the name's branding value

And that's not even talking trademarks

RedCardinal

blue4ever wrote: »

Lastly:

Quote:
No, neither am I [convinced that they are treated equally]. And Google has stated that underscores and dashes are not treated equally, although they have plans (already in place?) to change this
Dashes currently get my vote - treated as word boundaries by Google, and easier to read for humans


http://groups.google.com/group/Google_Webmaster_Help-Tools/browse_thread/thread/c7eec41ae012bc12/130cb19f07d04797


So WTF are you digging at me for the exact same conclusion

Read that thread - it's about URIs not URLs. You wrote:

www.book-shop.net as opposed to www.bookshop.net, Google and search engines will parse the former and haven't a clue about the latter

Total bull**** - go and do some searches on google for [irelandseye]. Now take a look through the results and what's bolded...