Are hyphenated domains that bad?
 

Just bought my first domain with a hyphen in it last night and was just curious what everyone else thinks about em. My mindset in general has always been to stay away from anything other than a non hyphenated .com.

Thanks

I just bought one, but that because the name of the product is hyphenated...

y-e-s

.

I paid 1.18 via that godaddy deal that was posted earlier so it isn't a big deal. Was just curious. The domain is a 2 word domain 12 letters including the one hyphen. I try to stay under 10 chars usually but the godaddy special got me all nutty lmao.

I checked Google's keyword tool and the hyphenated and non hyphenated on exact both had 2400/month.
Maybe i'm doing it wrong.

This is not an exact science by any means, but the idea is to make it as easy for those with smaller intelligence to find your site, as these people are less likely to know how to find free stuff, they also have less control over their urges. Like I say, it's not an exact science, but you certainly don't want to be making it more tricky for these less intelligent individuals to reach your site by placing hyphens in the domain name

It only matters to the 15-20 surfers alive who still type in.

After hitting the site once they just type in half the domain before the browser
history comes up with it.

On a different computer/browser they search on google for your domain and then click
thru. Seriously!

Some people have to delete their browser history :2 cents:

:1orglaugh Sorry...
It's like the others have said, the hyphen doesn't matter as much as the search engine ranking. People just click on the link... :2 cents:

They work great for marketing tools and in some cases can be a main domain. I prefer to stay away for branding though.

In my ranking tests a non-hyphenated .net or .org ranks better than a hyphenated .com for the exact same keywords with nearly identical marketing, just saying.