I am a little confused. How does google know that "petcatfood.com" is actually "Pet Cat Food" and not just "petcatfood" ?? I know that google sees hyphens as spaces so "pet-cat-food.com" is seen as "Pet Cat Food". Does anyone know even if google and other search engines can take keywords from right next to other words and know what they mean. If they can't wouldn't it defeat the purpose of getting high paying keyword urls for the purpose of seo unless they had hyphens seperating them? Your thoughts??
I don't know the precise answer to your question but a little experiement will give you some clues. Try doing a Google search on "car buying guide" and look at the various results and how some or all of the keywords are bolded in the URLs. Notice that it recognizes each of the keywords separately in URLs even though there are no dashes or underscores.
Thanks stackman this is a good point I actually hadn't thought of that simple example before. I can't work out how they do it? I mean it can't be 100% acurate can it? Anyone else have a comment?
idk, but i have read that urls like these (examples, no advertisement, this is not a real webpage) http:xx www. adsense mumbo jumbo .com/clicks_article are better than these http:xx www. adsense mumbo jumbo .com/jsoi_13 So yeah. I guess they like the better one better (i have read)
If you experiment with Google's allinurl: search operator, it is clear that Google does not recognise keywords in unseparated character strings in URLs for indexing purposes. If you search for allinurl: white house the only pages from the www.whitehouse.gov site that match the query have white and house included in the directory or file names using recognised separator characters (+, -, . etc.) e.g. www.whitehouse.gov/?White+House. This can be confirmed by combining site: and allinurl: operators in a single query:- allinurl: white house site:www.whitehouse.gov I agree that Google highlights unseparated keywords in URLs that match search terms, but in computational term this simple 'pattern matching' exercise and not resource hungry. To analyse a URL which lacks separator characters and determine whether it contains keywords relevant to the site would require considerable computational power, which Google appears to have decided is better utilised elsewhere.
If what your saying is true why don't more people opt for word-word urls? I understand that they are harder to remember and there is traffic lost to wordword but if it is strictly se traffic that one is targeting word-word would be the way to go yes? ...
If it is strictly SE traffic that's being targeted, I would agree that word-word is the way to go. I assume that hyphens aren't used more because: most people assume that because SEs highlight the search terms in unseparated URLs in the results that they are used for ranking purposes of those people who appreciate the distinction, many are targeting a combination of traffic sources and from a purely marketing point of view unhyphenated domains are better. These people will usually try and incorporate separated keywords into directory or file names It's quite possible to overdo the hyphenation and make domains/URLs appear spammy, both to users and search engines.
Youv'e got some good points there thanks for contributing. I don't think this particlular subject is talked about very much and it is good to get an understanding of how this all works
I think that the interesting question is whether it's worth buying both the hyphenated and non-hyphenated version of a domain (assuming both are available at minimal cost) and 301 redirecting the non-hyphenated to the hyphenated, allowing you to market the former and optimise the latter.
if your trying to rank for pet cat food i would'nt solely rely on the domian name, becuase i think it reads domian names as domain names. How ever it looks is the way its seen by google but no ones searching pet-cat-food
I know that the url is not the only seo technique but it is a start As for people not searching pet-cat-food they don't need to becuase google sees "-" as " " thus making pet-cat-food "pet cat food".