hyphens in domain names? pros? cons?

no benefits and makes the domain worth fraction of the non hyphen version...

Less CTR aswell

I would agree with this too.

hyphen domains are almost always "not preferred" let's say. unless you got something like, a-z.com I'll take that off your hands if you don't want it.

thanks...

I had an idea for a hyphenated domain, and I still might proceed with it.

I had no choice but to go with a hyphenated domain. But in our case, it made not one iota of difference.

pros - you can buy them for $10
cons - everything else.

sure it did. How do you know how much more traffic you would have gotten without the hyphen? It is just common sense that at least a couple type ins (if not a lot) for your domain were lost because someone remembered the name but forgot to put in the hyphen.


I think the hyphen can be similar to a .net for branding purposes. If they are not paying attention they will go to the wrong site (.com instead of .net in this example).

If you are not looking to brand anything then it doesn't matter if you have a hyphen, for branding purposes at least.

Why not just own both? hypen and non-hyphen?

Staring at those few words can make your brain explode

Maybe the non has already gone.

the non-hyphen... err. is gone.

Hey Chris, do both and test.

It's been a couple of years, but I tested a couple of two-word domain pairs for which I own the hyphenated and non-hyphenated versions. The non-hyphenated got more type-ins, but the hyphenated got (much) better search rankings.

I wouldn't hyphenate more than three words, however, to avoid a penalty, i.e. keyword spammed names like www.free-teen-cheerleader-porno-videos.com are right out.

Hope this helps

Doesnt hurt you at all for SEO but for value down the road it sucks. But if you don't care about that go for it.

i've ranked well with both; hypen and non hypen versions of the domain

I have a hyphenated domain I'm about to SEO for the obvious keyword. Let's see how It does, I ofc would have loved to have this one without the hyphen though lol. Teen-Boobs.com

No, it didn't. Our situation is 100% different. We lost no type ins. Her fans go out of their way to look for her. If they type it in and get nothing...they google it. So we never lost those people doing the type-ins. Not even one. Nobody who went to the trouble to do that type in would then quit that easily. But most just use google instead of their address bar anyway. Didn't affect us one tiny bit. Claudia-Marie.Com has been the number one alexa rated big tit solo girl site since the 1st month it went online.

Interesting. So one can expect good SE placement even with hyphens in the domains and yet people seem to think that this isn't valuable down the road?

Obviously not having the hyphen is better, but if you're getting great SE placement with the hyphen, how can that diminish the value of the domain?

One can expect better placement from the hyphenated version.

Remember, SE's use hyphens as word space designators. The SE "knows" that "keyword1-keyword2.com" is composed of two keywords. When it sees "keyword1keyword2.com" it doesn't "know" where the break is -- although it may be able to "guess" -- but it will rank what it knows much higher than what it guesses.

For example, does "bitemeat.com" = "Bite Meat dot com" OR "Bite Me At dot com"?

You just need to have both versions, ie. Claudia-Marie and ClaudiaMarie > both redirect to the same site, but submit the first version to SE's etc. and just call the site "Claudia Marie" -- anyone trying to type in will get it right.

I have a hyphenated domain that got great SE Placement with almost no SEO. I parked it because it wasn't making me money. Lost the SE placement. I just rearranged the sponsors and placed PPC ads and I'm putting it back up. We'll see if it gets its place back. I'll let you know.

Robbie, I would have given you the benefit of the doubt that maybe it didn't affect you that much for reasons stated but to say not one person makes you look like a noob. Sure some people who typed it in by mistake and went to the wrong site then went to google and searched for it, but you don't know what everyone in the world is doing or has done. There is doubt that some people went to the wrong url and then didn't go to google. to think otherwise is just insane. no one person hun? crazy.

you obviously missed the part about branding and lost type ins. If you are not going to brand the site and it will be some cheesy blog or something like that then by all means use hyphens. The most important reason NOT to use a hyphen is because it is hard to remember and therefore you will lose type in traffic.

If you going to try to build a brand, and create a website that will be talked about etc... then you would be crazy (in 99% of the cases) to use dot net or hyphen domains.

The way to look at hyphen domains is that for the same price, you can get a much better term in the domain than you would for a non-hyphened - essentially the same way you'd look at a .net or .org vs. .com. Given that and given they don't seem to hurt SEO much if at all, developers looking primarily to SEO whatever they get as their main source of traffic love hyphen domains.

For a professional biz, you should almost always get an unhyphened .com, and honestly if you're serious about it, you should buy a better one on the secondary market vs. registering, even if it's a couple g's or more. It's more than worth it to set yourself apart from the crowd plus you're not stuck with a brand new name that Google wouldn't be too fond of. For throwing up minisites/blogs/etc. that aren't your primary business and utilizing SEO, then hyphen domains are worth looking at IMO to get the better term in the domain for the price.

No difference??? Don't be ridiculous...

It may not make as much of a difference since there's nothing on www.claudiamarie.com and you have 1st place rankings for "claudia marie" "claudiamarie" / etc - but it still makes a faint difference for the numb nuts that type in "claudiamarie.com" into their address bar and are confused at the result.

Did you try contacting the owner of claudiamarie.com? If they got smart instead of doing shitall with the domain they'd set it up as a landing page...

I vote for NON-hyphenated; but, per DN Journal a couple of weeks ago, www.Cloud-Computing.de sold for $38,240. Pretty darn good price, especially with the Hyphen AND the "de" TLD.

All of my 49 cloud-related domains are non-hyphenated dot COMs, i.e.,:

Cloud-Related Domains, (Updated as of 9/10/10)

CLOUDUSING.COM
CLOUDCALCULATING.COM
CLOUDCALCULATIONS.COM
CLOUDRESPONSES.COM
CLOUDCOMPUTINGSPEED.COM
CLOUDDOWNLOADING.COM
CLOUDGRIDCOMPUTING.COM
CLOUDSPEEDCOMPUTERS.COM
CLOUDSPEEDCOMPUTING.COM
CLOUDSPEEDDOWNLOADS.COM
CLOUDSPEEDCOMPUTATIONS.COM
FREECLOUDCOMPUTATIONS.COM
CLOUDCOMPUTERSPEED.COM
INTERNETCLOUDUSE.COM
WEBCLOUDUSES.COM
INTERNETCLOUDUSES.COM
FREECLOUDUSE.COM
WEBCLOUDUSE.COM
PRIVATECLOUDPROCESSING.COM
PRIVATECLOUDSCOMPUTING.COM
FREECLOUDPROCESSING.COM
CLOUDPROCESSINGDATA.COM
DATACLOUDPROCESSING.COM
FREECLOUDUSAGE.COM
ACCOUNTINGCLOUDS.COM
RESEARCHDATACLOUD.COM
DEFENSECONTRACTORCLOUD.COM
CONTRACTCLOUDS.COM
VENDORCLOUDS.COM
CLOUDBUSINESSPROCESSING.COM
FREEBUSINESSCLOUD.COM
BUSINESSCLOUDUSEAGE.COM
CLOUDBUSINESSUSE.COM
BUSINESSCLOUDUSE.COM
MEDICALCLOUDUSE.COM
LAWENFORCEMENTCLOUD.COM
TRAVELCLOUDUSE.COM
MEETINGCLOUDUSE.COM
SEARCHENGINECLOUD.COM
INFORMATIONCLOUDUSE.COM
CLOUDCOMPUTINGUSE.COM
FREECLOUDCOMPUTINGUSE.COM
FREECLOUDUSING.COM
CLOUDUPLOADING.COM
DOWNLOADINGCLOUD.COM
CLOUDMOBILEDOWNLOAD.COM
MOBILECLOUDDOWNLOAD.COM
DOWNLOADINGCLOUDS.COM
UPLOADINGCLOUDS.COM

EC, in my experience it depends on how you are seeking traffic. If you are driving traffic to a given domain you could have a domain like "XXXXXXXXX dot com", which has nothing to do with the subject with which the domain name is concerned. In other words, your domain name could well indicate that you have a site, the domain name of which concerns "basketball" but the site is really about "grape jelly".

Keywords properly placed and the use of either manual or automated methods of focussing traffic to that site make all the difference in the world! This will even work with Google search results if you do it right.

Waiting for SERPS though can outlive you. We can no longer be hyenas looking to scavenge. We must go out and kill something if we are to eat!

My $.02.

Thanks for looking and thanks for the chat!

Sally.

English speaking people prefer non-hyphen over hyphen any day.

Germans though, absolute opposite.. Even in English language domains they would most likely try hyphen first, since they are more used to that...

I have a couple and they list okay in search engines, and agree that you should not use more then 3 words. In the past spammers would use hyphen domains but now it seems many are legit websites.

Jesus Christ what the FUCK did you just say?! ... horrible examples ... basketball to grape jelly?

I think what you mean to say is if you are branding something obscure (google.com) you're better off without hyphens. But if your domain name is specific to your business: big-teen-boobs.com then hyphens gain SE advantages (which are still outweighed overall to non-hyphen domains in my opinion)

exaclty, he can have said he was only losing 1% of his traffic i wouldn't have replied but to say he has NEVER lost 1 person because he has a hyphen domain is just insane.

What happens if the person who owns claudiamarie.com decides to make it a middle age big tit women's site and puts really good content on it, then I bet he would be losing a lot more than he is now.

I think that I fucken said what I meant! I didn't even mention hyphens. Realizing that I just blew your poor-Google-infected mind, I suggest to you that you go back and READ what I wrote! And you get to be just as disgusted as you like; I don't care! I'm not some co-dependent, drug-addicted, alcoholic housewife who doesn't say what she means and doesn't mean what says! This is BUSINESS and has nothing to do with your personal preferences, however sensitive you may be. so go GFY!

You want to earn, you need to get out there and actively beat the bushes, knock doors and sometimes kick in a few.

If you want to foreever be on your knees sucking the dick of The Great God Google, be my guest!

You want to know how to generate traffic, I can tell you but I am beginning to believe that the COLLECTIVE IQ around here is far too low to bother with!

Prove me wroing, please, as I like this place!

Sally.

Jesus Christ you are one psycho bitch!!! Get back on your medication ...

The BasketBall to Grape Jelly of domain marketing

I think he was on coke or something when he said that not ONE single person was ever mis-directed in the history of claudia-marie.com vs. claudiamarie.com ...

Okay - I read your horribly crafted original post 6 times over and besides your horrible wording and horrible example (jelly to basketball) I finally see what you're saying, and it makes you appear even more stupid.

To say that a domain name's relevance to your topic means absolutely nothing is ridiculous.

You don't *HAVE* to have a relevant domain name to your topic - but to suggest that i-am-a-stupid-cunt-with-a-yeast-infection.com is just as good for a website about cars as CARS.COM (or that the domain name basketball.com is just as good for a site about grapejelly as opposed to grapejelly.com ) is ridiculous. Actually only a psychotic cunt would ever suggest something so absurd.

depends on what you are referring Evil Chris....

it has no impact to SEO...

.

They aren't popular.

SE's don't need hyphens in domains to work out the words in a domain. and all things being equal a non hyphenated domain will rank better than a hyphenated one.

I have over 100 domains and 30% are hyphenated and traffic wise some perform better is SE's dont ask me why and as far as customer readability if your going for SE rankings there is NO DIFFERENCE. I did my research in Mainstream marketing to find that out.. and a customer will click on a google result either way.

I own several domains both hyphenated and non-hyphenated and I see absolutely NO difference in SE placements. With very minor differences either way they seem to perform the same for me. Some of them are 2 words and one is 6 words long. As long as you layout the site with good SEO you should be ok IMHO

And this is from a 73 yr old laymen thats been in the porn biz since the early 90's.

Peace

hyphen or not doesn't matter

Perusing this thread over some fine Colombian (Coffee! LOL!) and a smoke(Dammit!) this morning, I realised that I am pronouncing both blasphemy and anathema and that very much like the preaching of an atheist at a Southern Baptist convention, my message is becoming lost in the shrill outcries from the congregation! It is as though I have pronounced that some Great Belief to be false and a lie, which of course I have and the congregation is responding by speaking in Tongues, evidencing whole-body tremors, seizures and total apoplexy!

Listen my children and you shall hear of the Interent Ride about what I hold dear!..............

I never wrote that a domain name itlself is unimportant when standing alone and in fact, if you are using a domain as "stand alone"; that is not being marketed without effective and meaningful SEO, then you damned well better have a very relevant domain name. If you are using effective SEO, I contend that the relevancy of the domain name to the product or service being offered on that domain becomes far less significant in the scheme of things.

Consider, if you will, two guys who want to open a bar; Billy Bob and Dirty Joe. Consider a major four-lane highway to represent the search engines. Billy Bob puts his bar, which he calls "Billy Bob's Bar, Beer Joint, Delicatessen, Gun And Knife Club, Casino And Chili Parlor" (Keywords)right next to the highway with all that traffic, puts up a little sign, which we will consider to be his domain name. Billy Bob figures that he'll get all the sales he can handle because of his proximity to the big four-lane highway and so does little or nothing in terms of promotions or advertising.(No SEO) Now Billy Bob's Place is really very, very nice because he spent a gazillion dollars on design, furnishings and equipment. He puts himself behind the bar and hires a couple of average college girls to wait tables. Place ought to do good, right? I mean right next to all those people driving by?

Dirty Joe puts his bar five miles out in the sticks in a remodelled barn with a leaky roof, calls it "Dirty Joe's Stables"(Not relevant) but puts up a searchlight, has dancing girls, poor lighting, drink and food specials, old second-hand restaurant tables and chairs, pinball and poker machines, pool tables, waitresses in skimpy outfits and the place has sort of a well-worn and almost seedy appearance. Dirty Joe offers drink special to all of the biker clubs in the area and lets them know about it through free ads in the local fishwrap (SEO), he puts up a few signs along the four-lane highway(More SEO), he sends out a couple of Boy Scout Troops to hang flyers on doorknobs (SEO) and come Saturday night, his place is packed and the $ are rolling in, hand over fist!

Why?

Dirty Joe didn't sit on his ass waiting for people to drop in!(Traditional marketing; no SEO.)

Billy Bob is sitting in HIS nearly empty bar alongside the four-lane highway waiting for people to find him. The problem with the placement of Billy Bob's joint is that people on that four-lane highway (Search Engines) just drive on by at 70 mph!

Dirty Joe is not a vulture, he is a HUNGRY WOLF and even with a poor facility, a goofy name(Domain), old fixtures, you-gotta-get-lost-in-the-woods-to-get-there, by intelligent and effective use of SEO, Dirty Joe is now knee deep in $ and has even more money to live on and even more money to promote his little dump of a bar.(SEO=ROI=More SEO=More ROI, etc.)

Not the best analogy but not the worst either and you should be able to get my point once you wrap your heads around the fact that I am essentially telling the search engines to Go Fuck Themselves!

Are you a HUNGRY WOLF ready to go out and KILL something or are you a VULTURE, waiting for something to die?

Thus speaks Sally.

Thanks for looking, now get the Hell out of my post* and..................

GO FUCK YOURSELF!

Sally.

*Simpsons homage. ;)

I've done both and seems that it's worth a shot to try the hyphen domain. SE ranking might be good from my personal experiences. Just trying to help. It's always worth a shot IMO.

I had a great brandable hyphen domain a few years back that was anal-hangover.com and it ranked well on SE

Robbie has unique and very superior product to sell, so he can in theory only sell to die-hard fans who will find him on any domain and say fuck off to everyone else, including affiliates. Still, with everything else being equal, he would have a lot more sales - prob over 50% more - on a name like bigtits.com. With his name - hyphen or not - he loses pretty much all potential word-of-mouth and casual customers.

Your average webmaster with shitty product to sell and shitty domain has huge odds stacked against him.

What in God's name are you babbling about you psycho!



Competing online and being a "wolf" as you suggested means doing everything and anything. Doesn't take a fucking genius to know that you can brand a name that's irrelevant - but it also shouldn't take a genius to know that a RELEVANT domain is always better than an IRRELEVANT domain... regardless of how much you speculate. Take your grape jelly nonsense and shove it.



-------- Didn't read any of this bullshit below - the basketball / grape jelly example was bad enough, thanks ----------------


As for that coffee - I live in Colombia so I can drink the best Colombian coffee whenever I please.

pros
- seo

cons
- seo
- less typein traffic

I know this thread is a bit old but this topic interests me and for anyone else out there who was contemplating buying a hyphened domain.

Everyone has a point of view on the subject, most who do not like purchasing hyphened domains make a valid point in regards to branding. I also would probably never pick up a domain with a hyphen which isn't a .com.

With that being said there is a market for a GOOD keyword rich hyphened domain, just this past week 5 domains with hyphens sold for a good amount and they weren't .com's either.

led-shop.net $1,013
Real-Estate.asia $14,175
handy-recycling.de $2,429
big-sport.de $1,215
horse-racing.co.uk $3,200

As a matter of fact I just picked up Porn-Orgies(.)com, not sure if I am going to sell it or put up a quick site but I think I can find a buyer to give me more than what I purchased it for (registration fee) if I decide to sell it.

You sometimes meet a person with whom you'd like to share your site's URL and spelling the shit out along with all the hyphens sucks ass. The same goes for phone calls and whatever other non web conversation you might be having. If your domain contains a hyphen it will sound like cheap scam as you're spelling it out.