Are-Too-Many-Dashes-Viewed-As-Spam?

Hmm.

Sounds right.

But I actually think Google differentiate between URL and domain.

But it's of course just speculation.

 

I agree wrmineo

 

I agree with what Minstrel said Jim; I think you might be taking the wording a little too literally. I didn't even notice the discrepancy.

 

From what I have noticed Google doesn't like "-" in the domain name but actualy likes them in the rest of the url.
For example a very big site I know (www softpedia com) that has around 300 uses dashes for all the articles(title=url).

 

Ahh, you support my theory

 

Any evidence for that? Examples?

 

Hmm ... let's see:

The #1 returned result for "webmaster forums" is a URL with a dash in the domain.

The #1 returned result for "lindsay lohan" - yep, a dash in the domain.

"windows help" has 408,000,000 results - wouldn't you know, the #4 result is a dashed domain ....

Yes, it would seem hating them Google is ...

 

Good finds, wrm...

 

if google hated dashes with a passion, blogger - by default - wouldn't make the static url full of dashes, right?

 

the conversation has gotten a little more tricky. they're now considering whether google feels differently about dashes in the domain versus url, meaning after the .com/ or whatever.

 

To remind everyone... What Matt Cutts actually said:

 

Regarding the domain name issue, I'd forgotten about my main competitors.

See http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&...35,GGLG:en&q=ottawa+psychologists&btnG=Search

These are the top 5 results. Everyone but me is using a dashed domain

 

I don't mean one dash in a domain, that is of course no problem. I meant more than 3 and that that could trigger a filter. About the URLs I still believe that it is no problem.

 

Where does the "more than three" rule come from? Especially in view of Cutts' statement that this is not done algorithmically...

Also note that "URL" includes the domain name, by most definitions of "URL"...

 

haha I think this conversation is going in circles at this point

 

In a system I am currently building I use something similar to

domain.com/Category-Name/Article-Title/

My domain does not use any dashes, but, I use this in other places as well and I don't believe personally that this is spam, this in my opinion makes it easier for me, I don't think you will ever be penalized for your domain unless you a. copyright infringe or b. have that domain like minstrel pointed out.

 

It seems to me that people are forgetting a good rule of thumb when developing their pages...

Only target 1, maybe 2 keyword phrases. 3 is pushing it. If you are focusing each page for one phrase there should not be a need to cram 12 words into the file name and use 20 hyphens.

In addition to this, it seems that Google is able to discern the keywords from the file name without the use of hyphens. AND Google often knows similar phrases that mean the same thing. Example:
Do a Google search for "seo"
in the SERP you will see that some of the sites use hyphens some dont. But Google bolds "SEO" even when hyphens are not present and even bolds "search engine optimization".

I hope that makes sense, not sure i explained it clearly.

 

But what if it's a 12 word search phrase?



How do you squeeze 20 hyphens into a 12 word phrase?

 

Very carefully (i should have known someone wouldnt let that math slide)

My point with that was just to say that if you desire 12 words to focus on, is it because you are trying to focus on more than one keyphrase (which perhaps you should reconsider) or is your keyphrase actually 12 words (which seems pretty silly to me - I would think it rare that someone would type a 12 word phrase into a search engine.)

 

How about where the hell did I leave my freaking car keys this time?