Dashes between words in domain name

[gavinmcnamee]

I was wondering if dashes affected search results in google etc...

For example bluewidgets.com or blue-widgets.com

Will the search engine differentiate the two words if they are not split up with a dash? Causing poorer search results?

Is there any other similar issues concerning this matter anyone might know off?

[lavazza]

Featured Home Page Discussion: July 26, 2007
Underscores Are Now Word Separators
[webmasterworld.com...]

[Christian SEO]

The post about the underscores and Google is timely, but doesn't apply to domain names. But the answer is yes, search engines can match each keyword if they separated by hyphens and you gain a small advantage there. But most people don't like the hyphens much, so you lose there.

Google will match the "word1 word2" to a domain word1word2.com but not so a search for just "word2". It will put the two together and try to match, but not try to figure out what words are embedded in a domain, since there could be many of them.