Trying to pick domain name for my site. when google indexes domains does it seperate obviously cojoined words. E.G. "www".complexityresearch.com into complexity and research ? or is it better to have "www".complexity-research.com ? The domain is important is it will be used a lot for descriptive linking with subdomains. E.G. "www".Karotype.Genetics.complexity-research.com
Dashes are required to indicate separate words. (Think about how a piece of software might try to separate the word "therapist." )
Actually you don't need dashes at all, Google can separate words, In fact I never use domains with dashes.
Google looks for a keyword, period. Whether you used therapist.com or the-rapist.com, it could still potentially return a result for the search term 'rapist' at therapist.com (forgive the example).
It depends on the word. If it's a dictionary word, yes. If one is a dictionary word, yes. If neither are - no.
Wrong. In fact, your example shows the opposite. I like to use domaintools, as it breaks the domain into words. I am sure google sees something similar. http://whois.domaintools.com/therapist.com (yes this is seen as "the rapist" - but that is of course with no other context)
google can pretty much tell the keywords, no need for dashes - I never use domains with dashes, looks like spam to me all the time - as a result I never visit sites that have dashes... yak
It seems to me that the closer domain always gets the higher google listing. So the above would be my 1st choice... also whoever said you could only have 1 domain? If you feel that another could target your words then by all means buy up a few of the most closely related so you can Brand.... As for the { - } being spammy...... Actually sometimes its really nice to seperate large words and they look good.. Its when they do xxx-xxx-xxx that looks crappy..... but 1 looks ok. thx malcolm
it can seperate the word even something like thailand it still will seperate thai from land for some keywords and some site. ^^
another reason i don't like the " - " in the website name is that if people are typing your site in, they often times won't remember it and the non " - " version will end up getting your hard earned traffic.
I say buy both, and have one redirect. I recomend putting your site on the non dashed domain, and having the redirect on the dashed.