hyphens, to be or not to be?

[uptim]

What do you tink about hyphens in the domains names?

The spiders are able to parse:

www.houseandcars.com

or is better:

www.house-and-cars.com

Thanks a lot!

[willamowius]

Despite what a lot of people say: I'd go with the hyphens.
I couldn't read the name otherwise.

[chicagohh]

If you can get both - do it. Like it was mentioned above, you can read the hyphen easier and search engines follow it well, but most people will not type in the hyphens.

[faltered]

I had the same problem when I was going for a domain. I used the hyphens and don't regret it so far.

My only problem is now that I'm getting ready to advertise and market my site, it's a little wordy to say "Visit us as domain hyphen dot com."

[davezan]

Get both, the hyphens for SEO purposes, the one without hyphens for advertising it
in other ways. For the latter, promote it as www.MyDomainName.com.

[kodaks]

If you use hyphens, there may be less chance of a spelling mistake.

[guez]

If the hyphens are not cutting a keyword, then it's worth it. Otherwise, you get penalized in SEO.
Example of bad use of a hyphen: auto-mobile-forum.
Example of a good use: automobile-forum.

[adfree]

I ALWAYS try to get both, only when the non-hyphenated is gone I would go with the hyphenated alone. The only downside I have experienced is verbal communication.

If you allow usability and common sense you will be succesful. A searcher looking for german saucage is very likely to take both seriously:

GermanSaucage.com
and
German-Saucage.com

Sometimes maybe even the hyphenated one a tad more because of better recognition when it's spelled out in the SERPs.

I would consider Ger-Man-Sau-Cage.com to be stupid spam.

[bhartzer]

Hyphens are fine, but no more than two hyphens.

[submitx]

Yep, 3 or more hyphens definitely get penalized in Google. 2 is OK, but my recommendation is to stay away from dashes. If your main goal is to improve rankings with dashes, then forget it. It is not a factor anymore. There are more important factors such as your content and link popularity.

[growingdigital]

Domains without hyphens are better for usability and branding. It may make sense to register the domain with hyphens just to protect your brand. Despite what has been said, there is no empirical evidence that a domain with hyphens will rank better than one without, all things being equal.

[adfree]

Not to forget the major motivation though: availability!

Again: if you plan for great content and care about your users you can be as successful with web-site.com as with website.com.