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I'm close to finish version 1.0 of a new site and I have got the domain already, and to protect a little the brading I did buy some combinations that I'll park to only one name.
The think is that I'm not sure which domain to use as the real one to get links and all stuff, it is a two words domain, so I did by word1word2.com and word1-word2.com, I was playing a little bit typing the domain names in GG and it looks like GG is able to parse it better (even suggesting corrections for typos) when I type word1-word2 (note the -) .. so I'm confuse because everywhere you read about it seems like everybody recomends to avoid the '-'.
What are then the real reasons behind the '-' in the middle of a multiword domain?
Thanks,
Carlos.
[webmasterworld.com...]
It looks a good point of disscusion about the same.
Carlos.
The reasons for the "-" in the name is that the "-" acts as a space in search engines. Many cover their domain inventories by also registering the same names with dashes in them for search engine submissions and optimization. The individual words become searchable instead of them as one word.
This is mostly done as coverage, it terms of value, the domain is more valuable without the "-" as most would never type in a dash naturally into the URL line.
Hope this helps,
Monte
[edited by: DaveAtIFG at 11:30 pm (utc) on May 10, 2004]
[edit reason] Abbreviated signature [/edit]
That would already have been accounted for in the traffic vs. revenue section of an appraisal for the domain. In almost every known appraisal and public sale based on the domain alone, "-" domains do not receive nearly the purchase frequency nor the pricing than multi term words put together in a domain.
See post for evaluation criteria:
[webmasterworld.com...]
Strictly from the POV of "where do you show up in the SERPs, all other things being equal" there's some evidence that the SEs parse or possibly weigh the hyphenated domains a bit more favorably. Ergo, from a 'value in use' perspective, if the domain is an industry phrase, SE parsing and the natural language of the backlinks may make the hyphenated domain more valuable, not in a FMV sense but in a ongoing revenue generating sense.
At least that's consistent with how I interpret his question.
A look at older threads wouldn't hurt:
[google.com...]
Sid
I think I opened the topic too fast .. that is why I also pointed in a second answer about other topic with the same stuff.
Anyway thanks everybody for the advice it has helped me a lot and reading other topics too. I think I'll go with the dashed domain because my interest is to position better in the SERPs, anyway as I said before, I have registered both with and without dash, so if a customer doesn't type the dash it will be ok, I'm parking the one without dash to point to the dashed one ;-) ... or is not a very good idea? :-( could it be seen spamy?
Carlos.