True or False

[marthrock]

a "dash" (-) in a key word is given more importance in search engine crawls than un-hyphenated words. They are filtered first.

[TheBrain]

What is your point? Are you asking whether this is true or false? If you type led-effects or led effects in google you get the same results on the first positions, yet less results for "-"! I am afraid I don't understand your point.

[Zap]

What marthrock is asking, brain, is if all other things are equal, which domain would rank better for certain keywords;
hyphenated or non-hyphenated.
(Odd, that the word "hyphenated" is actually not hyphenated and the word "non-hyphenated" actually is)

Keyword: big mac

Which domain ranks better: bigmac.com or big-mac.com

[Pairodime]

I believe this to be true.

[Cricket]

And speaking of putting a dash in URLs, hyphens are often better than underscores [Ed. Note: bolded by Matt ]. african-elephants.html is seen as two words: “African” and “elephants”. african_elephants is seen as one word: african_elephant. It’s doubtful many people will be searching for that. Vanessa as Guest Writer on Matt Cutts Blog

Dashes vs. Underscores
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/dashes-vs-underscores/

Official Google Blog
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2004/...googleguy.html

[Zap]

Thanks Cricket.

I've read the Matt Cutts entry before but not the other one.
I read a few other items as well and the general consensus seems to be that hyphenated is better for the search engines because it tends to rank better and get more traffic, but un-hyphenated is better for humans because we're lazy and don't want to speak them or type them.

It would be nice to see someone with a lot of experience, who's done some actual testing with this, make a comment here.

[dekac]

if you can then avoid hyphen

[John Scott]

Google parsing keywords in Domains

[jumpenjuhosaphat]

I've often heard that the underscore is treated as a space, ie this_and_that is seen as this and that, whereas hyphenated words like this-and-that, can be seen as either or, because of the grammatical use of the hypen, ie in non-hyphenated.

[Zap]

Thanks John.

[John Scott]

Originally Posted by jumpenjuhosaphat

I've often heard that the underscore is treated as a space, ie this_and_that is seen as this and that, whereas hyphenated words like this-and-that, can be seen as either or, because of the grammatical use of the hypen, ie in non-hyphenated.

The underscore IS NOT treated as a word seperator. The hyphen IS treated as a word seperator.

[jumpenjuhosaphat]

Originally Posted by John Scott

Google parsing keywords in Domains

Hey, that's good information, bad news, but good information nonetheless. Or should I say none-the-less...

Edit: Oooh, I just realized I have got a lot of work to do now. But wow, thanks for that.

[marthrock]

Excellent responses although we seem to be talking about 2 things and perhaps I should have been a bit more specific but. There is the hyphenated key word in a URL and then there is the hyphenated key word in a meta key word. But it appears that the bottom line is the Hypen treats it as an either or. So if your trying to optimize the key word "Music Gifts", You would not want a hyphen because it ends up parsing both words. Correct?

[Cricket]

Originally Posted by Zap

It would be nice to see someone with a lot of experience, who's done some actual testing with this, make a comment here.

I didn't realize we needed to list our credentials before commenting.





edit: I'm just teasing you Zap!

[Cricket]

Zap, here are a few more articles that may help.

http://www.v7n.com/keyword-descriptive-domains.php
http://www.v7n.com/keyword-descriptive-domains-2.php
http://blog.v7n.com/2006/01/03/the-place-of-seo-in-internet-marketing/
http://blog.v7n.com/2006/03/03/guy-kawasaki-an-interview/

In the end, it still comes down to being just ONE part of search engine optimization, which may or may not be in the best interest of your marketing plan.

[Zap]

Thanks Cricket.

[marthrock]

Cricket, I read all of the links, but the best had to be Kawasaki's. Like a jolt of Jolt, I now know what I need to be telling my client. a) it aint broke. b) the traffic is there c) the site has had all of the requisite SEO done to it and d) perhaps uniquesness and value are missing...

Having said that I'm realizing that yes there are things that we can do better and that the majority of us get positive results from the the things we do. But at the end of the day it really will come down to the product. This whole thread has given me cause to step back for a sec. Might have just been from reading Kawasaki but nevertheless thank you everyone for taking the time to contribute. Have a wonderful and safe holidays.

[Sadu]

http://www.ragepank.com/articles/50/...to-name-files/

I like unseparated in the domain, and dash separated in the URI.

Here's why....

flowershop.com
flower-shop.com

animalshelter.com
animal-shelter.com

sprachschuleneuseeland.de
sprachschule-neuseeland.de

(sprachschule = language school. sprachschulen = language schools)

The first domain has the words flower, flowers and flower shop. The second domain does not include the word flowers. And so on with the other domains.

But my main reasoning is because dashes in domains confuse people, and I hate my word of mouth traffic to go to the competetion.

[John Scott]

I recently registered nzflowershop.com - would I have been better off getting nz-flower-shop.com ?
Probably not.

With the dashes, I get to target some phrases that are in my URL...
nz flower
nz flower shop
flower shop
flower

Without the dashes, I get all those, plus...
nz flowers
flowers

So by avoiding the dash, I open up addional phrases, and Google does recognise the words within the domain.

The underlined part is incorrect. Google does NOT parse keywords in domains when they are run together.

[HigherHeights]

I dont think it makes such a big difference because search engines will index and rank pages based on their content so basically putting a dash in ur domain name is only really usefull if you want your visitors to be able to read your website URL easier.