cdrom vs cd-rom - ecommerce vs e-commerce

popularity of hyphenated keywords

[lavapies]

Hi all,

I have seen many threads discussing hyphenated domain names, hyphens in domain names, and hyphens separating keywords, but noton the popularity of keywords that could or not contain hyphens.

I was wondering what people thought about cd-rom vs cdrom etc.

The problem is I've found it very difficult to get any stats about popularity of keywords with hyphens.

The espotting and overture tools (and other software tools I've tried) seem to deliver results with no hyphen no matter you put in.

Any opinions on this would be appreciated.

Thanks

[korkus2000]

IMHO I would think no hyphen. People are lazy. I would think no hyphen would catch more surfers. It is just like web site and website or e-mail and email. I would target both but spend mor time on the non-hyphenated version.

[RedEyes]

I think it depends on the word. Do you think the number of pages that Google returns is a decent barometer?

Cdrom returns 2,260,000.
Cd-rom returns 4,600,000.

OTOH,

email returns 119,000,000
e-mail returns 8,360,000

[korkus2000]

ecommerce - 2,940,000
e-commerce - 3,730,000

but these sites could be targeting the wrong phrase.

[RedEyes]

Yeah, and this doesn't really represent what people search for, but what people have written on the web, perhaps making deliberate assumptions as to what they expect people to write....

[lavapies]

Thanks for the replies folks.

I guess in the absence of any real way to check the number of searches for a given hyphenated word, the number of pages listed would be the only indicator. Thanks RedEyes.

As to whether it's a good barometer, I'm not sure. I definitely agree korkus that people are fickle and a bit lazy on the web, especially compared to other forms of media.

I wonder if in the case of cd-rom, the number of results is greater because the hyphenated version used to be the 'defacto' way of writing the word, and 'cdrom' is more of a recent trunkation.

As a former journalist, the house style sheets that I had to use all used 'CD-ROM' but I think 'cdrom' has become more acceptable.

Hmm, so the outcome is it's still confusing and hard to guage :-)

Anyway, thanks for the input.

[gmoney]

I looked to see if Wordtracker.com could help and here is what I found:

keyword: count: competing(Google)

email: 14486: 128000000
e-mail: 3738: 8910000
e mail: 2590: 8920000
e-commerce: 2113: 3750000
ecommerce: 1637: 2950000
e commerce: 688: 3750000
cd rom: 497: 4810000
cdrom: 337: 2460000
cd-rom: 312: 4810000

It seems to depend on the word as to whether the hyphenated or unhyphenated version is the most searched.

Google treats a hyphen the same as a space so for example it treats the queries "e-mail" the same* as "e mail" (*don't know why 8910000 number is different from 8920000 though).

A couple of Notes about Wordtracker:

I used the "exact/precise search" and checked off the box "compressed exact search" and then typed in the 9 phrases.

You can read more about "count" on Wordtracker but there is plenty of talk about in on this forum. I just want to point out that "count" is not the same as Overture's results but they are both a measure of search frequency.

[lavapies]

gmoney... thanks a lot, that's really helpful.

It's ironic that I had a proper look at wordtracker for the first time last night after reading a few threads on it :-) seems like a useful tool. ]

Seeing as it seems to be only one able to distinguish between hypehanted and non-hyphenated words, I may pay my $6 for a one day period of research! The monthly subscription seems a bit much however.

Thanks again. That's a big help.