to dash or not 2 dash?

<word1> - - <word2>?

[retro]

Am thinking about setting up another hobby site in the near future, and there are 2 principle words which, when used together, are the most commonly used word pairing used when referring to this subject.

Now, www.word1-word2.co.uk has long gone, but there are other related word combos which are available, but slightly less relevant to the subject. However I'd really like to use my 'ideal' 2 words somehow.

Would I therefore be better going for a domain such as word1--word2.co.uk (note the 2 dashes - which is still available), rather than using a less commonly used word pairing separated by just as single dash??

Would the SEs ignore the 2 dashes, as they might with just using the single dash version had it been available, and just focus on my 2 ideal words???

This isn't a trading site so I wouldn't be reliant on people remembering to use the 2 dashes when typing in the url by hand, as most hits would either be via inbound links (from sites whose theme/subject closely ties in to my favourite 2 words) or from SEs.

Sorry if I've waffled a bit :-)

R

[Ove]

Toolman started a very good discussion about this

[webmasterworld.com...]

and this one

[webmasterworld.com...]

/Ove

[rcjordan]

>This isn't a trading site so I wouldn't be reliant on people remembering

We have one member here who is jokingly called 'Mr. Double--Dash' and, having seen the traffic pulled in on one of his ventures, I'd say it's OK.

[Ove]

We have one member here who is jokingly called 'Mr. Double--Dash'

Could that be me :-))

/Ove

[retro]

thanks all - from what I read I don't see any penalty from using double dashes between my fave 2 words, and as SEs generally seem to ignore the dashes, hopefully the word1 word2 combo that would be left might do me some good, alongside all the rest of the SEO stuff to consider...I think!

R

[legster]

A year from now we will be talking about registering domains like this: word1-----words2------word3.com.

First it was one dash, now two, when will it end? :)

[Salesmaster II]

WOW Great thread guys, I must try some.

While I am here though, let me add to this.

Discovering "salesbooks" taken, I got "sales-books".

later when checking rankings, I noticed I shot out from 10 to 68! I knew something was wrong.

Checking rankings, I noticed that instead of searching with the words "sales books", I had searched "sales-books".

Starting again and keying in "sales books", I noticed I had my number 10 back.

In summary, I can see great advantages extended to using the "_" and therefore the "--". When you have a url including the hyphen, you will get a double entry listing, but only one when hyphens are not used.
Logic suggests "--" could get you triple entries.

[SuperSoup]

this "--" thing trips a spam filter at least at google one dash is acceptable justlike repeating words twice in a domain trips a spam filter also. if this was not in place at google or other major SO then we would be inundated with "--" and dubble words on top of all search phrases and this is not the case as you can see.

[jamsy]

I totally agree with Supersoup. How many times do you see "--" or keywordkeyword.com high in a search engine. Not often.

Retro - However if its a hobby site then you might as well try and if it dont work then just change the domain name later. Not as if you are going to lose big bucks!! :-)

[IanTurner]

Or your could do 123-sales-books
or sales-n-books or sales-books-7

[SuperSoup]

Ian, its just my opinion but i think the "SO" dont like #'s also, that may also set off a filter. the only names you ever see on top are ones with one dash or two tops name-name or name-name2-name3 or ones with domain in the name without no spaces but it has to make sense like name1name2.com. Also .com's have more weight than all other extentions.

[Terrier]

How about
Keyword-.com
For single keywords,Spam Filter?

[retro]

Supersoup:
..this "--" thing trips a spam filter at least at google one dash is acceptable justlike repeating words twice in a domain trips a spam filter also...

thanks for the info, I havent read that anywhere else so I may play safe and go with <little word that is kind of related><word1><word2>.co.uk

From checking out some test search results, the top urls being returned for my subject area contain a little word, such as "my", then my favourite 2 words bunched together (no hyphens), then split them apart in the title, as if defining how the concatenated string of words should be split apart, using *just* those 2 words in the title.

thanks again for the input y'all ;-)

R

[conor]

<<How about
Keyword-.com
For single keywords,Spam Filter?>>

The 'trailing dash' hasnt been available since 1999 when network solutions blocked it following a high profile incident of someone registering microsoft-.com, If my memory serves me correctly :)