Hi. I want to but a domain like this: keyphrase-online.com. In your opinion, does google value this domain less than keyphraseonline.com ? ('cause keyphraseonline.com isn't available )
It is rumoured that domain with a hyphen fares better than the non hyphenated domain in the SEs but I don't think it is true. The top search engines can read the non hyphenated domains in the same way as they do in case of a hyphenated domain.
well hyphenated domains do better and i can give you a live example i have just purchased this domain Bsnl broadband and its only been 3-4 days since i bought it and the only reason for buying it was to rank it well for keyword "bsnl broadband" there is another site which ranks very well right now which is www dot bsnlbroadband dot com and this guy is targeting the same keyword aswell and right now my new domain www.bsnl-broadband.com has got only 1 page indexed and even the home page is not indexed and it appears on page 6 if you search for bsnl broadband. Keep a track and you will see it will rank better then the one without the hyphen. give it 2-3 weeks and you will see the results may be 4 weeks but it will get there
Hyphenated domains do better, which is why you see mroe domains with hyphens. Even the statdard url structure of www.mysite.com/latest_news is not being written as www.mysite.com/latest-news
This is just like subdomains, search engines see these names no differently. A domain with a dash may rank better not just of it's domain. Matter of opinion really.
Not unless you overlyt dash the whole thing.. I think it was mentioned in SEOmoz's on and off page serp factors...
so would you say strength wise bsnlbroadband dot com is not read differently as compared to www.bsnl-broadband.com when it comes to ranking these two domains for keyword "bsnl broadband"
There was another thread floating about regarding this topic, sorry I cant find it. I am not sure how true that quote is as I have a domain that has two dash's in its name which ranks in the top 10 on Google.
i think there's very little difference, other than the fact that the dash is one more irrelevant character, but that difference is unlikely to have as much weight as the difference between the content of your page and the contents of the competitors' pages.
Also, it makes sense if you have a domain like domainsexposed, so it's easier to see the keywords as domains-exposed, and not have people or search engines read it as domain-sex-posed.
There is absolutey no difference in a domain name - unless you use too many hyphens which can be seen as spam i.e. my-very-great-domain-name-site.com. There is a difference in page names between using an underscore and a hyphen. A hypen does not help google read the domain name any better. A domain name without hypens is much better for people remembering the domain name (type-ins), but not for search engine rankings. There are a hundred different reasons why a domain name with a hyphen might be outranking a site without - but that has nothing to do with the hyphen.
the goal of the site might determine whether you should use dashes or not. for example a designer might think it looks good, but it might be unprofessional for a govermental site. but the question of this thread was originally about whether google rates the domains differently or not, so in what way do you think it does matter? care to expand on your comment, dcristo?
Where is it rumored that a dashed domain name fares better than one without... My web hosting venture uses a dashed domain name-- I have not noticed a difference. Q...
I've went for the non dashed domain eventually. I find it more convincing as a brand.. Thanks for all your opinions