Which will rank better, if everything else is the same? racecartestdriver(dot)com or race-car-test-driver(dot)com ? Please help
I don't think search engines care much. It's more an issues of appearance, memorability, legibility etc.
i asked an seo this question at a conference this week and was told the same thing - doesn't matter much to the SE's. they'll figure out the content on their own quickly enough. you're better off shooting for memorability, which i'd think would almost always be the version with no dashes
If the search engines doesn't care much if it has dashes or no dashes can it pick out words if they are already reversed? as an example: golf tips. Golf tips and golf-tips would obviously be the same thing. However if you weren't fortunate enough to get it in that order and got tips-golf or tipsgolf would the search engine be able to pull golf out of tipsgolf or would it think that was one term? Also on a similar tangent: Do search engines care as to the ordering of the keywords in the domain? Online-Game-Site vs Site-Game-Online?
About the order.... Sort of. If your website were golf-tips.com. Assuming a small to medium amount of competition you'd rank for the keywords "golf tips". You'd also rank for the keyword "tips golf" but not as high. As a serious example, I did SEO on a computer repair company in a local market. Let's say London. Their website was called LondonPCRepair.com(not really). They ranked #2 in google over 1,200,000 sites for London PC Repair. Yet, they only ranked in the top 80 for PC Repair London. However, given the choice, it's better to rank(as far as regionally) for the Niche then region, rather than region before niche. I.E. I find 3 times the number of searches across 20 regional niche sites I manage for PC Repair London, over London PC Repair. Make sense? HTH, MR
How relevant is domain name really anymore? Most top sites in any niche aren't the keyword with dashes or even the keyword. ie. Hollywood Celebrity Gossip It's never Hollywood-Celebrity-Gossip or a variation of it it's something that often doesn't even have one of those keywords in it. So is it better to get a brandable unique name that may have no keywords in the domain over a say triple - domain with keywords in it?
Makes alot of sense thanks for that. Under that same logic would PCRepairLondon.com come up as #2 on google for the search term PC Repair London? If so then it's clearly the way to go.
Search engines today give less or no extra weight to the dashes in URL's.You don't essentially see those keyword1-2-3-4 rank as much as they used to. Plus having more than two dashes in your domain name makes it look spammy as Tyler mentioned. It affects type in traffic too, because most people aren't used to typing out hyphens in names, and 2 or 3 of them is a sure no no.
Do what Matt says... http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/dashes-vs-underscores/ For domains, try this simple test... http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=rag+epank&btnG=Search "ragepank" is the name of my site / domain. If Google gave relevance based on nodash domain names, you would think I would show up somewhere in the 7 results for "rag epank" because this text is in my URL, but not my content. So dashes are better because Google will include them in the relevancy algo. But dashes suck for branding. I'll always go for branding over a quick boost in rankings, but for short term MFA sites, dashes are probably better.
Google ascribes HUGE relevancy to keywords in your domain name. Especially in non-competitive Regional Niche Markets. For instance do a search for boston massage. Check out the top website. Do a bunch of searches for regional niches. dallas computer repair, etc. It does make a difference, don't fool yourself otherwise. M
Browse Matt Cutts' blog archive. He has discussed more than twice on how Google and other search enginestreat dashes.
Domains are cheap enough that I take variations if they are available and direct them to whatever one seems best. I think a dash or two really improves readability in many cases. Of course, I assume no type in traffic.
That is interesting. I guess to some extent it depends on what you are dong with a site. If you are metaphorically speaking looking to design a billboard that will influence someone driving by on the highway who cares what the domain is as no one will ever specificially look for it you just want it to some how get to there screen so keywords regardless of order and -'s could be viable. However if you are looking to brand something that people will chat about at a water cooler / social community thats when a brandable name is more important.
The search result fluctuate, IMO, some time Google do pretty good job and some time produces nothing but spam and useless crap.