To dash or not to dash?

Does it make any difference to search engines

[stu2]

Is there any difference between a domain name with dashes and a domain name without dashes with regards to search engine serps results? I'm thinking of word1word2.com as opposed to word1-word2.com (not some huge long name with multiple dashes).

[Corey Bryant]

It is usually better to get both and then use a permanent re-direct for one of them. This way, the SE knows where to break up word1word2. It might think it is word and 1word2

-Corey

[Gomez]

It really doesn't matter from a search engine perspective. You see both flavors succeed in many different cases. The key to having a site succeed depends on many variables, not just a URL.

Some URL related things to think about though:

If you get a domain with too many dashes it looks spammy and that isn't a good thing. IE] - www.word1-word2-word3-word4.com

A word1word2 domain with no dashes can be catchy. A nice "branded" domain could end up having crossover marketing potential.

As Corey said, get both versions (dash and no dash) and re-direct one.

Try for a "dot com" domain. (If you are a charitable or non-profit organization use a .org domain).

[JKMitchell]

Try for a "dot com" domain. (If you are a charitable or non-profit organization use a .org domain).

Although if you are based in the UK and are primarily concerned with customers in the UK I'd look at a .co.uk - .org.uk domain. I don't know if the same would apply to other country specific domains but in the UK people looking for a local supplier would tend to go to a .co.uk domain first.

[montgomery]

well, based on my experience I can tell you it does make a difference to google whether you use a dash or not. Without dash, the whole thing is one word - with a dash, though, it's interpreted as separate words. The dash is seen as a delimiter.

[chopin2256]

I wouldn't choose a domain name just for a keyword. Acutally from my experience, search engines seem to pick up a compound word in a non-dashed domain. For example, I have two domains called compound1compound2 instead of compound1-compound2, and Google picks up compound1 and compound2 as two separate words. Therefore, if you are going to make something big out of your website, go for branding instead of going for the keywords. Your domain will just look stupid if it looks like "keyword1-keyword2" and people will not remember it. People will remember a site that has a good name, regardless if it is a keyword or not. Before Google came out, that word probably was never searched for, because it is a mispelling. They focused on branding instead, and the only reason they picked "Google" was because it looked better than googol. And now everyone probably thinks Google is the correct spelling of that number!

[Wai_Wai]

Sometimes do we place too much weight on search engines (machines), but forget our customers (humans)?

[ddogg]

It helps for link text. When people link to your site, if you have dashes, they will tend to use separate words. If it is one word that's the link text you will get. Not helpful for rankings.

[scjack]

I own <snip> example-example.tld and 'exampleexample.tld'.

I used the latter as the primary URL and redirected the former but MSN only showed the site when people typed the phrase 'exampleexample' with no space.

After getting about 2 hits a day I changed them over, now 'example-example.tld' is the site address and I get about 100+ hits daily.

The other big players don't show it as a high ranking but it's fairly new so that's to be expected.

So for MSN I'd go for the 'dash' every time.

[edited by: Webwork at 6:34 pm (utc) on Sep. 24, 2005]
[edit reason] No specific domain drops please; Check your stickymail [/edit]

[cornwall]

Go to Matt Cutts blog (Googleguy) and he has the definitive answer