How Are Hyphens Treated?

[myrrh]

Is, for example, "abcd-e" seen by the SEs as "abcde"?

[ChadSEO]

Most, if not all, search engines see a hyphen as a word break, so white-house is a two word phrase, while whitehouse is only one word. Underscores generally aren't seen as a break, so white_house!= white-house.

[etechsupport]

Hyphens are translated to spaces during indexing and during searches.
It may produce unexpected results in searches involving longer phrases or words with multiple hyphens.

[Dave_A]

Is, for example, "abcd-e" seen by the SEs as "abcde"?

Well my search engine web spider would pick those letters up as "abcd e" and it would then take abcd as a new keyword and add it to the Keyword tables the "e" would be discounted because it is too short a word.
The smallest size word it will except is a two or more letter word.

I hope this helps