Delimeters

Google, Yahoo and MSN

[Reflect]

Hi,

I searched on this question, I did find results but they came from 2002. I also found a new post here...

[webmasterworld.com...]

without any answers. I also searched Google but got differing opinions (bummer).

Someone suggested to me yesterday on another forum that Yahoo, MSN and (soon to be)Google are now penalizing for using keyword-keyword.htm for page names. They stated Yahoo and MSN are activley tossing these pages and that Goggle, grapevine, will be starting.

I always believed this made the page name appear to the bot as spaces and was perfectly accepltable.

I know I am also asking about MSN and Yahoo in a Google thread but I did not want to spam by cross posting.

Anyone?

Take care,

Brian

[siteseo]

Anecdotally, do a search for any three-word keyphrase, and I bet at least a few of the top ten results in G/Y/M will have file names separated by dashes. This pretty much eliminates the question. G has stated that domain names and file names with more than two dashes are considered "sp@mmy" but that doesn't mean you'll be eliminated from the index. There are lots of legitimate reasons for naming pages with the dash structure.

[your_store]

They stated Yahoo and MSN are activley tossing these pages and that Goggle, grapevine, will be starting.

I'll have to disagree with that statement as well. I have pages sitting at the top of all the above engines with 2 or more hyphens in the filenames, but maybe I've just been lucky.

G has stated that domain names and file names with more than two dashes are considered "sp@mmy"

I think what you were referring to was from the quote below:

MSG #136 [webmasterworld.com...]

Doug Cook from inktomi said that hyphenated domains were an issue and that they have conducted extensive quality/relevance studies on them. What they found was that overall relevance and page quality dropped off dramatically after two hyphens.

Two years later and hyphens are still around. Of course, that's not say they couldn't easily be penalized by an algorithm in the future.

[WebGuerrilla]

You might find it interesting to spend some time digging through some allinurl: searches and pay attention to how G does or does not highlight keyword occurences found in the domain/url.

[Spine]

Hmmm, I wonder if this has an effect on me. I've had problems since september 23rd, and I have 3 dashes in my domain name. Looking around in the results, I don't see too many with more than 1 dash in there.

The problem would be, how to move my site to a new domain, when it's currently listed in Yahoo and DMOZ. All the links and PR would just vanish right?

I've got a site that provides info to people who look for it, and 4 years ago, I wasn't thinking that extra dashes would get me in trouble.

[rfgdxm1]

>Someone suggested to me yesterday on another forum that Yahoo, MSN and (soon to be)Google are now penalizing for using keyword-keyword.htm for page names. They stated Yahoo and MSN are activley tossing these pages and that Goggle, grapevine, will be starting.

And if I have a page about just blue widgets on my site, would not the most sensible name be blue-widgets.htm? Makes it easy for me to know what it is about. Peanalizing for this would be just stupid. Might make some sense for pages with a huge number of hyphens, but one hyphen is a Bad Thing?

[arthurdaley]

Most sites I've seen which have a domain in the form keyword1-keyword2-keyword3-keyword4.com also happened to be poor quality spammy sites. Sites like this were popular in a previous SEO era as a means to get people to link to your site as 'keyword1 keyword2 keyword3 keyword4'.

I doubt that search engines are penalising against domains with just one hyphen though. If its any consolation, there are a lot of sites using a domain in the form of keyword1keyword2.whatever (no hyphen) which Google saeems to be filtering out, so I doubt it's got anything to do with the hyphen.

[Spine]

I agree that more hyphens seems spammy, but there are exceptions, otherwise Yahoo wouldn't have added my site to their directory for free.

[siteseo]

"I think what you were referring to was from the quote below:"

No, I was actually referring to a spokeswoman from G speaking in San Jose this summer.

Content is still king. If I were a SE, I would not penalize a site based on it's domain name or file naming structure. That simply doesn't make sense. It's all about the content on the page and the links which point to it.

[Reflect]

Hi,

Thanks all. Believe me that is what I expressed also but....you know. I have been domainless for three months now so I thought I might have let myself slack too much. Getting ready to add an affiliate site in the next month and did not want to shoot myself in the foot (so to say).

I will also play with allinurl: to see (I should have remembered that one).

Thanks again for the validation,

Brian

[mincklerstraat]

does the above advice also apply to underscores ( _ ) as delimiters? More than two in url (I don't care about domain) spammy, but not likely to get you severely punished?

[HitProf]

I'm not seeing such a penalty in either Yahoo, MSN or Google. Both _ and - seperated keywords show op on highly competitive terms.

[siteseo]

G itself has several pages delimited by two underscores. Do a search for "google terms of use"

[Spine]

I'm seeing results (granted they are on page 2) with sites using www.keyword--domain.com, the crappiest looking use of hyphens around.

[Dayo_UK]

I have seen sites with www.keyword1--keyword2.com too and have been wondering how they get treated by Search Engines - they certainly are in the results.

Would have thought that when asking for links - half of the links go to the wrong place.

Also user type in traffic would probably just go to the one hyphen domain.

[WebGuerrilla]

I think it's important to separate domains and file /directory names when having this discussion. The issue all engines are taking a hard look at is hyphenated domain names. A domain with more than two hyphens is much more likely to be an attempt to manipulate the index than a standard domain that uses hyphens in other places.

My point about the allinurl: searches was that when you come across sites that have been excessive with hyphens throughout both the domain and file structure, you will see the Google doesn't highlight all the occurences of your search.

Now that may be just a display issue, but I doubt it. To me, it looks like at the very least, they are restricting the amount of matching words they are willing to count. And when you add to the equation that they clearly now have the ability to recognize keywords in domains without the use of a delimiter, it just doesn't make any sense to me to make hyphenated domains a part of a long-term strategy.

I certainly don't think you ever see any kind of outright ban on hyphenated domains, but I do think you will see it factored in to ranking algos (especially in competitive areas) more and more.