Dashes in names/filenames?

[younghistorians]

Hi all,
What is the significants of putting dashes in domain or file names? For instance, alot of the articles on IMR all have dashes in their name, like
http://www.internet-marketing-resear...erank-wins.php ...does this effect the overall search engine viewing and placement any?

[awall19]

the dashes act as word separaters so search engines can see the different words in the filepath. it helps some with rankings, but probably not a ton.

it also helps contextual based ad servers to understand the meaning of a page.

[Watersweb]

Does it matter if I use - or _? I have been under the impression that I needed to use _.

[awall19]

_ is bad as google will run the words together

- is good as it will separate the words.

[JERRY JULIANO]

nice tip! i'll have to try that

[thebassman]

Yeah, I'm implimenting this on my photography resources section of my photography forum... it should be ready to go within a week or so. Should be interesting to see what SE's do with it.

[eCommando]

These days Google seem to recognize the words in the domain name if 2 words are together. It'll highlight only the part of the keyword in the search results.

Dashes work similar to space for SE.

[Ferre]

I have tested it recently. Dashes do make a difference when you target specific keywords.

[cltwebs]

I too like - in domain names, pages, and pictures. I think makes enough of a difference make it worth your while to do.

I've seen much success with domain names with - in them.

However hyphens in domain names do make it more difficult to brand verbally...

[thebassman]

Originally Posted by Ferre

I have tested it recently. Dashes do make a difference when you target specific keywords.

Thanks, Ferre, good to know.

[al2six]

hyphens don't matter to google anymore. it would recognize all three words in internetmarketingresearch.com

[John Scott]

Originally Posted by al2six

hyphens don't matter to google anymore. it would recognize all three words in internetmarketingresearch.com

Not true.

[awall19]

Originally Posted by al2six

hyphens don't matter to google anymore. it would recognize all three words in internetmarketingresearch.com

the external highlighter looks for character strings and highlights each matching string. the external highlighting program is not part of Google's algorithm though.

[al2six]

Originally Posted by awall19

the external highlighter looks for character strings and highlights each matching string. the external highlighting program is not part of Google's algorithm though.

really? if google has the technology to do so, why isn't it in their algo?

just curious, where did you hear that its not in the algo?

[MadHatter]

as an example, internetmarketingresearch can not be picked up by google as 3 words, because how would it know which words were actually words?
it could pick up:
inter
arch
market

all from that one string, so google needs a definate way to seperate words, such as a hyphen or an underscore, but hyphens are always my choice

[al2six]

Originally Posted by MadHatter

as an example, internetmarketingresearch can not be picked up by google as 3 words, because how would it know which words were actually words?
it could pick up:
inter
arch
market

all from that one string, so google needs a definate way to seperate words, such as a hyphen or an underscore, but hyphens are always my choice

you need to look more carefully.

However john scott says that google only uses technology to bold words in the serps, but not in the ranking algo

[MadHatter]

google is only highlighting what you type though, regarless of if is a complete word or not:

[awall19]

google can highlight words in the serp nearly on the fly. it would take a ton more processor time to apply this throughout their database. that is the way i look at it anyway.

[disgust]

dashes are no longer needed for google.

however they may help with yahoo/ink/msn/etc.