Domains with hypens: Will it prevent high rankings on Google?

I'm looking for some feedback on dealing with sites with multiple hyphens in it. Google is getting tougher on spammers, and too many hyphens in the domain is pretty much a form of spam in Google's eyes. I think 2 hyphens is pretty much the limit. In the Big Daddy datacenter (64.233.179.104) does anyone know of any sites that rank well for competitive terms that have more than 3 hyphens in the domain name? Is too many hyphens the kiss of death when it comes to ranking well on Google?

If so, is a site owner better off getting a new domain name and using a 301 redirect so as not to lose all the link power from the site with too many hypens? The other factor is having to wait 9 months before ranking high on Google with a new domain.

 

Two hypens is fine. I'm looking for someone with 3 or more hypens that is ranking well.

 

I would much rather avoid more than one (or two) hyphens in the domain names. IMO, they look VERY spammy to the eyes.

Plus I haven't yet heard that if you have a keyword(s) in the domain name, it will help your site in Google.

But they do help in Yahoo and MSN these days.

 

I'm not aware of any SEO penalty but, as previous posters have pointed out, it makes your site look pretty shoddy to humans if you overdo it. One or two, fine. More than that looks like a spam site.

 

I agree with both of you. I try to avoid more than 1 hyphen myself but I have a client that has a domain with multiple hyphens and I don't want to have to create a new domain for him and deal with the Google aging delay.

 

Matt Cutts recently said in a comment on his blog that they do not consider hyphens as a measure of spam. In other words, dash away, dash away, dash away, all!

 

Dazz,

If it's the same comment I've read, it's not recent. That comment was made in August 2005. http://mattcutts.com/blog/dashes-vs-underscores/ Hyphens did not warrant any kind of penalty according to Matt, but Google is changing their algorithm all the time in what they consider to be spam. Although, from a logic standpoint, there's no way to determine if a site is "spammy" simply by it's domain name but I just haven't seen any domains with more than 3 hyphens rank well for any competitive term. Google is not exactly always on the up and up about their algo.

 

Yes. But he's also said he doesn't like them much personally.

Google won't care. People looking at Google search results (ot those from any other SE) may very well feel differently (again, I'm talking about more than one or perhaps two depending on the URL).

 

That's not necessarily because of the hyphens, though. i don't see any evidencd of a penalty. I don't see a lot of evidence to suggest a significant boost either if that's all the site has going for it.

It may also be a turn-off to potential link partners and advertisers.

 

mjp92122, this was just a few days ago at http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/back-to-work/#comments

Matt Cutts Said,
March 7, 2006 @ 8:30 pm
We don’t use hyphens as a spam signal.

 

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/dashes-vs-underscores/

 

I think you're good with one or two hyphens. It just starts to look really bad after that. Good to hear you're not automatically penalized for them.

 

Many sites I compete with use both. They display a pretty url, but if you break up their links, you'll see that they use hyphens.
I think the idea is to get a phrase imbedded in your mind, rather than compete for the individual sums.
By the way in UK Google www.national-lottery.co.uk
seems to have hyphens and do well. The algo basically is 300 different things, and most would agree they ted to do worse now. However, MSN loves hyphens, and it practically guaranttes you number 1.

I use several sites for one website, and on linkmarket the one with the cool domain name gets 3 times as many requests as the real one,
which is a pity as the PR of the Ugly Duckling is 3 more, and linkmarket are slow to update this information.

 

I have said this before and I am again saying this -
NO Hyphens
NO Hyphens
NO Hyphens

To search engines it don't matter but as a user, it's almost impossible to type the link. Keep it simple. It's not necessary that all of your keyword have to be there in your url.

 

What's tough to type about a hyphen? You don't even need to use the <Shift> key...

As others have pointed out, there are many domains where a hyphen (or possibly two) is actually more clear. As with most things, it's not the hyphen that's the problem - it's overdoing it.

 

Hmmm...I am having a site applications-of-bluetooth-tecnology.com (don't laugh ) . This was my first domain and I felt that by keeping all the words, I can easily get on top of search engines. Than I realized that I could have done this by keeping some smaller domain as well. Now you tell me, how many of us are going to type that domain ? when I talk to my host,he also refers to it as "the longer one"

 

If you have a sticky website, visitors will bookmark your URL anyway, so having hyphens in your domain shouldn't be of great concern.

 

See, that illustrates the point: The problem with that domain name is not that it contains a couple of hyphens but that it is just a bad domain name. People aren't going to remember "applications-of-bluetooth-tecnology" (sic - you misspelled "technology") any better without the hyphens.

 

I wanted to register this domain, but it's too long, godaddy doesn't allow this.

Can someone please tell Matt Cutts not to recommend so long domains?