Are Hyphened URLs a problem?

[allanp73]

I have this last year encountered a problem when I used hyphened URLs (with 3 or more). I was told that Google considers these as spamy. I have a group of sites that had ranked in the top20. However, since the September update the sites have steady loss ranking despite the addition of links and dozens of pages of content.
I was hoping that I could get an opinion. What is the Google stand point? Does it penalize sites for excessive use of hyphens even when the sites are using it innocently?
Googleguy I would love to hear your opinion :)

[jatar_k]

there have been a bunch of discussions around about this, try this

[webmasterworld.com...]

or maybe Site Search [searchengineworld.com] for hyphenated urls or hyphenated domains

[allanp73]

Thanks... This thread helped, but still leaves me wondering. I have pr4 sites with excellent content and excellent SEO, however, they rank well below sites with no content, poor SEO and same pr4 with fewer links.
I am just trying to find out what was done wrong. The sites have steady slipped since the September update.

[rfgdxm1]

Google just never reveals the contents of the secret sauce. ;) However, doing anything heavily correlated with spam is dangerous. Lots of hyphens in a dmomain name is heavily correlated with spam. Painting a bullseye on your site is always dubious strategy.

[Chico_Loco]

I'm not sure if Google does rank sites with 3 or more hyphens lower that other sites, but they damn well should.. think about it..

term1-term2-term3-term4-term5-term6.com is not very friendly to visitors and is obviously a desparate attempt to get ranked higher..

That said, I'm speaking here about sites with MORE THAN 2 hyphens, I use URL's with 1 hyphen - but never 2.

[rfgdxm1]

Right Chico_Loco. I don't know exactly what Google does, and Googleguy sure as heck ain't gonna post the recipe of the secret sauce here. However, doing anything which tends to highly correlated with spam isn't a good long term strategy, because tomorrow Google or other search engines could end up ranking your site low. Seems to me sites with more than 2 hyphens in the domain name are almost always spam doorway pages and such. Because such names are not user friendly, they aren't used by non-spammy webmasters much.

[TheComte]

How about aluminum_blue_widgets.html? This is not considered spam using the underscore is it? I know the keywords don't get picked up, but I do this sometimes for readability. Just wondering.

[Chico_Loco]

Comte,

This thread specifically is referring to domain names, not file names. Domain names do not allow the _ (underscore).

[skipfactor]

I was wondering the same. I have a competitor that knocked me out of #1 Ink with this jibberish. In addition, every hyphenated-to-the-max(pun intended!) HTML page redirects you to the root of his non-keyword-rich domain.

I'm assuming we're both jockeying for the upcoming dance; please tell me there's no chance of him being indexed by Google with this dishonest approach! Also, will Ink eventually penalize him, or is that hopeless?

[TheComte]

This thread specifically is referring to domain names, not file names. Domain names do not allow the _ (underscore).

Opps. Nevermind. :)

[coldincanada]

I've put my personal limit on 2 hyphens in a URL, but where possible I try to avoid them all together.

[ga_ga]

This thread specifically is referring to domain names, not file names

I don't have a hyphenated 2nd level domain, but I have been using a number of url's of the form

[exampledomain.com...]

.. using 2, maybe 3, maybe 4 hyphens even :(

The pages involved are fairly keyword rich anyway; from reading so far I'm tempted to ditch this url scheme. Would that be a good idea?

[allanp73]

I really don't believe it is fair of Google to deliberately rank sites lower if they use hyphens. In my case I use the hyphens to create a theme of sites.
example
city1-product-for-sale.com
city2-product-for-sale.com

If Google doesn't like people using hyphens it should just remove any bonuses generated from having the terms in the URL. Currently, it doesn't seem to see the keywords in URLs, though I know Yahoo does give a bonus.

I got over fifty URLs all hyphened with 3 or more hyphens and did this to create theme. I believe it would be very unfair if suddenly after a year's work building quality sites that Google suddenly considers these as spammy and penalizes them.

NOTE: Actually I strted this because clients kept on making the mistake of adding the hyphens when typing my domain names. It seemed like a goog way of getting them to write the URL correctly.

[zarm777]

I see no problem with the hyphens when they are used properly. Most of the one word domain names are gone so most now buy domain names that are phrases which to me seem easier for the user to remember.

I think buy-it-city-state.com is better than buyitcitystate.com, it's easier to read and remember. The problem is with keyword stuffing the domain which looks like garbage, like buy-buy-buy-buy-buy.com I hope google does not penalize the long domain names for the sake of a few spammy looking url's, I too have a couple that use more than one hyphen.

[ALurkingFriend]

I got over fifty URLs all hyphened with 3 or more hyphens and did this to create theme.

I'm confused. I thought themeing was about how you organize a domain not lots of them.

Alanp, forget about the hyphens, I wouldn't do 50 urls because G might think they were a link farm. Could this have happened to you?

[MNBill]

In a similar vein, anybody have any experiences with multiple adjacent hyphens? E.g., travel--agency.com. I'm seeing these more often now ... not necessarily just Google ... but seeing them show up in results. In some highly competitive categories, I could see where they would be useful/useable.

I've also seen domains with many hyphens show up in results. Taken to its extreme it actually can create a kind of visual grabber, which is of course a different reason for using them. And we are in marketing communications, aren't we?

(You try it first though, OK?)

Frozen MNBill

[MaxMaxMax]

Fro a pragmatic viewpoint, I think Google would simply ignore keywords in hyphenated domains, because penalizing them could hurt a lot of innocent people. Or they might have some filter - if the domain name is the title of the index page or has sufficient incoming links, then it gets flagged as non-spam.

Based on what I've seen with my own hyphenated domains, there's no inherent penalty, but no real advantage either. But that's just anecdotal.

[allanp73]

-ALurkingFriend
"I'm confused. I thought themeing was about how you organize a domain not lots of them."

Each site is about a specific city and provide services for that city. Each site unique content (200-300 pages) about that city. However, I wanted to create a theme for the entire group (for branding purposes) where the sites could become part of a network.

"Alanp, forget about the hyphens, I wouldn't do 50 urls because G might think they were a link farm. Could this have happened to you?"

It is not a link farm. I am building network of sites. It is similar to the way there are multiple versions of Google for each country. Is Google building a link farm. No, it is offering services to different groups.

[Arnett]

If google ignores partial word matching in it's PR calculation then it makes sense to break a domain like autoparts.com into auto-parts.com just to get your keywords found in the domain. If it helps your position then use it. If it hurts your position then change it.