I have been told that using dashes like: apple-juice(dot)com and numbers in a domain name is a bad idea and can lower you placing on Goolgle and other major search engines. Does anyone else think this is untrue?
I think its ok if done wisely. apple-juice is fine as well as car2go as far as i know there is no problem with Google, but more with spelling when telling people the name of the site over the phone or on the radio.
There is no requirements or specs that you have to meet when you buy a domain name, the reason that people look to avoid such characters is that the domains are harder to get direct traffic from but with good SEO, that shouldn't matter as you can make your way through the SERPs and top your chosen keywords.
It doesn't matter if there is a dash or not for search engines, as long as you use it to separate words, not letters (eg e-x-a-m-p-l-e.ext). If your domain is available with a dash in it and makes sense, then go for it. Sometimes it's even better to use dash (eg pen-island.ext), to avoid confusion.
As for SEO, it's no problem if your domain contains dashes or numbers. However, if you were to sell such domain, it would have less value. Domains without dashes and numbers have much more value.
the only time I find them a problem is for offline marketing, Ie, trying to explain to someone the address over the phone can be confusing, other than that, it will rank as well as any other domain with the dashes
@theentry, I dont agree with the seo idea. I think there is no effect and the engines do not care the dashes nor the -s, the plural suffix. but it is your choise. if you make a good site, you can get hits.
What I meant is, that's it's good for SEO when the regular form (non-dashed one) isn't available. So if you need to choose between: keyword1-keyword2.com and keyword1keyword2randomword.com
For search engines does not matter what kind you have a domain with dashes or with numbers. For search engines is more important then how you optimize your page. True to domains with dashes and numbers, there's another problem - this is the difficulty to sell this domain is expensive, as prices on such a domain would be much lower.
Adding numbers makes it easy to remember than having dashes. Say if cars.com is not available, go for 123cars.com Adding nos wont decrease SE value of yr domain see http://www.google.com/search?q=greetings
agreeing with the numbers decision. especially 247 and 123. 247 for 24/7 would be a good choise if it is related to your domain.