is a hyphen ok in a domain? Advantages? Disadvantages?
- Thread starter Guyp
- Start date
Shane
Top Contributor
This question has been asked plenty of times and everyone will have an opinion.
I have a few hyphenated domains, and here's my opinion:
- Fine for a site that will be relying on search engine traffic.
- Crap for a site that is relying on anything other than search engine traffic.
I have a few hyphenated domains, and here's my opinion:
- Fine for a site that will be relying on search engine traffic.
- Crap for a site that is relying on anything other than search engine traffic.
DomainNames
Top Contributor
No, save your money and buy more expensive non hyphenated names. Hyphenated names dont sell well and are still available to register many times for obvious reasons
I have never typed in real-estate.com.au but I often have typed realestate.com.au for example. ask yourself a simple question how can I advertise my website on the radio.
How does it sound and is it easy to remember would you advertise and say "real hypen estate.com.au" on your radio ad.. not likely?
I have never typed in real-estate.com.au but I often have typed realestate.com.au for example. ask yourself a simple question how can I advertise my website on the radio.
How does it sound and is it easy to remember would you advertise and say "real hypen estate.com.au" on your radio ad.. not likely?
Shane
Top Contributor
I guess it depends how good the domain is. Using the example above, I would love to own the domain real-estate.com.au!
But I also owned financial-planners.com.au which I thought was good, and it struggled to get $100 at the Netfleet auction. I don't know now how much financialplanners.com.au would be worth, but it would be many many times more than the hyphenated version sold for.
But I also owned financial-planners.com.au which I thought was good, and it struggled to get $100 at the Netfleet auction. I don't know now how much financialplanners.com.au would be worth, but it would be many many times more than the hyphenated version sold for.
djuqa
Top Contributor
And how many people advertise On the radio anyway?
I find hyphenated names ok for small sites. My highest earning Adsense Site is NT-TOURISM.com
Relevance is always the best criteria for any name.
And OK for larger sites if the hyphen is actually part of the actual word or phrase
(Yes , There are some Compound English words / phrases that have hyphens. like ECO-Friendly)
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I cant for the life of me rank my hyphen sites as well as my joinned words . Just my personal opinion however I prefer the joinned domains. Example L
Launched two sites www.buyboxesonline.com.au
and www.buy-boxes.com.au
Search engines took www.buyboxesonline.com.au and ran with it
Anyways just my imput , Cheers
Launched two sites www.buyboxesonline.com.au
and www.buy-boxes.com.au
Search engines took www.buyboxesonline.com.au and ran with it
Anyways just my imput , Cheers
James
Top Contributor
You have the same content on both sites, so Google takes the first one indexed and more trusted and goes with that and the other site will never be able to over take it.
I am not a really big fan of hyphen domains, I always try and go for the non hyphen. I think out of the 100+ domains I have 4 are hyphen's =)
I don't mind hyphenated domains. One thing I have noticed is it can be alot harder to get decent natural ranking for .au hyphenated domains that .com hyphenated domains.
Having said that there are still some good, in my opinion, hyphenated domain names left in the au namespace for reg fee. I recently registered shoe-shop.com.au, which I would rather have than bargainshoeshop.com for example, but I am sure some people would not agree with me there. But I develop my domains so resell value is second place from domain income.
I have noticed more and more companies using hyphenated .com domains. A search for shoe shop on Google US brings up shoe-shop.com in top place for example.
Just like other domains, it depends on the strength of the words in the domain. If I stumbled across home-loans.com.au I would be tripping over myself trying to get my credit card out.
Having said that there are still some good, in my opinion, hyphenated domain names left in the au namespace for reg fee. I recently registered shoe-shop.com.au, which I would rather have than bargainshoeshop.com for example, but I am sure some people would not agree with me there. But I develop my domains so resell value is second place from domain income.
I have noticed more and more companies using hyphenated .com domains. A search for shoe shop on Google US brings up shoe-shop.com in top place for example.
Just like other domains, it depends on the strength of the words in the domain. If I stumbled across home-loans.com.au I would be tripping over myself trying to get my credit card out.
shags38
Top Contributor
Hi chaps,
I was about to post the very same question but then saw this thread - some good comments. I would tend to agree that for ease of remembering the site name (particularly for 3 plus words domains) resale maybe not so clever however it should, and I say "should" not be detrimental to search results (SERPS) - but I am not so sure so hence the following question - does anyone have an answer to this situation??
When using Google ADwords Keyword Tool the results data shown is exactly the same except that search "red fire engine" as normally typed with spaces between words shows those words as highlighted text when those words appear in the results but "red-fire-engine" search (using dasshes as spaces) does not show those words as highlighted which indicates to me there is likely a difference in the way the robots return searches for multi word domains with dashes as spaces between words but the difference is not explained anywhere that I can find. It is understood that the robots see a space as a - (dash) as is indicated in html code, so by rights the search results should be the same ** - so why the difference in adwords keyword tool search?
** edited add on ** - of course in the domain redfireengine.com there are no spaces for the robot to read as a dash to match the search criteria - the robot is dissecting the domain into known words according to its algorithms, but the searcher typed in spaces between the words in the search which would show in the hyphenated domain name, ostensibly being a "perfect match"!! (great name for a TV show)
cheers,
p.s. I too would love to have real-estate. "Blu-ray" is a fine example of a word that has a hyphen - I have a bunch of domains using Bluray and didn't use a hyphen because of my naevety at the time of registering them and believing what others said about the futility of hyphens in domain names..... = bum-mer
I was about to post the very same question but then saw this thread - some good comments. I would tend to agree that for ease of remembering the site name (particularly for 3 plus words domains) resale maybe not so clever however it should, and I say "should" not be detrimental to search results (SERPS) - but I am not so sure so hence the following question - does anyone have an answer to this situation??
When using Google ADwords Keyword Tool the results data shown is exactly the same except that search "red fire engine" as normally typed with spaces between words shows those words as highlighted text when those words appear in the results but "red-fire-engine" search (using dasshes as spaces) does not show those words as highlighted which indicates to me there is likely a difference in the way the robots return searches for multi word domains with dashes as spaces between words but the difference is not explained anywhere that I can find. It is understood that the robots see a space as a - (dash) as is indicated in html code, so by rights the search results should be the same ** - so why the difference in adwords keyword tool search?
** edited add on ** - of course in the domain redfireengine.com there are no spaces for the robot to read as a dash to match the search criteria - the robot is dissecting the domain into known words according to its algorithms, but the searcher typed in spaces between the words in the search which would show in the hyphenated domain name, ostensibly being a "perfect match"!! (great name for a TV show)
cheers,
p.s. I too would love to have real-estate. "Blu-ray" is a fine example of a word that has a hyphen - I have a bunch of domains using Bluray and didn't use a hyphen because of my naevety at the time of registering them and believing what others said about the futility of hyphens in domain names..... = bum-mer
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