Does having "-" in domain mean less traffic?

Are underscores valid DNS characters? They weren't in the original RFCs though these may have changed since I last looked

 

In a nutshell, a hyphen to a search engine is the same as a domain without a hyphen. But from a human perspective, the no-hyphen approach wins every time. The trouble is, you have to emphasise the hyphen in your branding if you only have the hyphenated adaptation. Else people will type your domain without the hyphen and arrive, often, at a SEDO page for which they will continue to locate a competitor's site.

 

They're not valid. I believe what was meant was underscores after the TLD. .../my_fabulous_page/, for instance.

 

I cant stand the hypen theory bottom line dont bother with it it is a real headache any way stick to key words in the domain better"

 

Wrong. www.wowguides.com will rank better for "wowguides", and www.wow-guides will rank better for "wow guides".

 

Bluecircle nice advatar

 

Thanks? What do you like about it?

 

That's probably true based on just the characters, but www.wowguides.com is probably more trusted and more link-worthy. If that helps it achieve a PR8 link it might not have gotten otherwise, than it could rank better.

I agree that branding is really the bigger issue though. I worked for a firm with a hyphen in it's name for several years and giving out my email was a serious pain ("Hyphen, is that like an underscore?"). People would forget the hyphen all of the time and their emails would bounce.

I also own a site that doesn't have the hyphen and I know I get traffic from people looking for my competitor's site which does have the hyphen in it.

 

I've noticed in the fan-site world "-" in a domain name get more hits... I opened a fan-site yesterday, tyler-kyte.net and it has recieved 4000 hits already.

 

http://www.internet-marketing-blog.com/2006/03/10/parsing-keywords-in-urls/

Hyphens will get your words parsed by Google, but if you're doing a lot of word of mouth marketing then it just may not be worth it.

 

I trust your a marketer

 

Yes, why do you ask?