How Will Google See My Domain Name?

[courier]

I have recently launched a new site, with a good domain name. I have not been geeting much traffic, so I have been wondering why.

I looked at the domain name again and noticed that there is the abominable three letter word begining with S and ending with X contained within the two words. Will Google rank this diferently? or will they have the ability to read the two words without making it into three.

Has anyone had examples of this before? I do not want to put a lot of time into making this if it will get held back.

[phranque]

this is the classic expertsexchange domain problem.
this is one case where it might be worth looking for the hyphenated domain.
you could also consider using PascalCasing for the domain name in any url citations and anchor text but you don't always have control of that.

[courier]

Thanks phranque it does look a lot better, ExpertsExchange and a lot more readable. I have done a lot of searching online to find an answer to this, but I am still not any wiser. I have a few questions if anyone can answer them.

1. Would it be OK to Pascal Case the DomainName, within my internal link structure.

2. If you can use Pascal Case within my link structure do I need to use a rewright in the htaccess to force this, or does the browser always convert it to lower case?

[flatfile]

Do you mean as in http://MyExample.com/blah?. If it's the case, the browser will just redirect to lowercase. I think I read somewhere that all domain names are lowercase.

My domain name is a combination of two words, but from different languages so I use the Pascal Case. Another thing I do is create distinct colors for both words on my logo.
.

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 9:01 am (utc) on May 8, 2012]
[edit reason] disabled auto-linking to make example url readable [/edit]

[phranque]

the everything before the 3rd slash in a url (protocol/scheme & hostname) is case-insensitive.
no redirects used or required.
it is purely visual.

[CainIV]

If you brand the domain with high quality links I don't think this will be an issue at all - also the example phranque gave was historic, since both breakdowns of the wording mean viable real-life things.

[courier]

also the example phranque gave was historic, since both breakdowns of the wording mean viable real-life things.

This is similiar story, my domain although meant a two words can also red three.

The best reading about pascal casing online i have found has been at [webmasterworld.com...] dating back to 2008 where pageoneresults puts it very well.

Will Google posibly see this as duplicated content if you pascal case you domain without doing so in the htaccess?
.

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 8:44 am (utc) on May 8, 2012]
[edit reason] fixed link (removed punctuation after htm w/o space) [/edit]

[Robert Charlton]

Will Google posibly see this as duplicated content if you pascal case you domain without doing so in the htaccess?

No.

To repeat what phranque said, with emphasis, formatting, and upper/lower-case added. ;)

Everything before the 3rd slash in a url (protocol/scheme & hostname) is case-insensitive.

No redirects used or required.

It is purely visual.

However, everything after the trailing slash is case sensitive in Apache and in Google, so you run the risk of encouraging user mistakes by mixing case in your domain name.

It sounds like, in your situation, it might be worth running that risk and using the Pascal casing in the DomainName.

Would it be OK to Pascal Case the DomainName, within my internal link structure?

I assume, but haven't tried it, that you would need to Pascal Case the DomainName in the internal link structure if you want the DomainName to display in Pascal case in the browser address bar.

In terms of server canonicalization, though, as phranque said, "it is purely visual."

[courier]

Thanks Robert, I think I am clear now.