Dashes in domains: More of a European thing?

Is there a different attitude or what?

[walkman]

I have been going back and forth with a person on registering certain names. His preference seems to be city-widgets.tld even in those cases where the citywidgets.tld is avail.

In USA, as far as I know it's preferred not to have the -, if possible. is it seen differently in Europe or is this a unique case? Long term and for branding purposes I think without the dash wins but I'm curious anyway.

[jecasc]

Here in Germany domains with "-" are quite common. You know - keeping every word appart, so everything has its proper order and there are no confusions.

Don't know about other european countrys though.

[lucy24]

If you are a user and you remember-- or can guess at-- the site name well enough to type it in, would you be more likely to type it with or without the hyphen (not dash!)?

In English, hyphens tend to make words look improvised or old-fashioned. It may have a different emotive impact in German, since the language itself uses far fewer hyphens. They may even make the word look interesting or exotic.

If both versions are available, of course you would register both, so it's only a question of which one redirects to the other.

[walkman]

@jecasc
Interesting. For many I registered both options but at some point it got too expensive.


@jecasc
_{Totally unrelated question: German and Scandinavian languages, how close are in terms of people understanding each other? Like Portuguese and Spanish or...?}

Thanks

[lucy24]

German and Scandinavian languages, how close are in terms of people understanding each other? Like Portuguese and Spanish or...?

Like English and German. Or Swedish and English. Or any other two Germanic languages you can name. If you know German you can guess at written Dutch, but that's the only overlap within the Germanic family except the Scandinavian cluster. The mainland ones, that is: nobody can understand Icelandic. And vice versa. Even spoken Danish is borderline if your own language is Norwegian or Swedish.* The three can read each other's languages just fine if they have to.


* "Dansk er ikke et språk, det er en halssykdom."

[jecasc]

German and Scandinavian languages, how close are in terms of people understanding each other? Like Portuguese and Spanish or...?

My native language is German and I do not understand Finish, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian or any other nordic language in writing or spoken. Not even dutch. Sometimes you can guess a word, but that's about it.

[lucy24]

Uhm, Finnish is not a Scandinavian language. It isn't even Indo-European :P

[Webwork]

No matter where you reside, setting aside any loss of type-in traffic and the other collateral damages of not having the unhyphenated version, online success is all and always about the quality/utility of the website . . . unless, of course, you're a successful SEO (of whatever hat color you choose to wear) . . and then it's all and always about getting the MFA click or the person to fill in a form or order myagra ;-/