Question about hyphens

[Sharpy]

Hi, just wondering:

Why do people looking for domain names for development, hate hyphens so much? Most peoples budgets will never allow them to buy a good "Type-in name anyway. Aren't you better to have a keyword domain name with a hyphen in it rather than a non hyphenated name that may be catchy, but has no chance of ever getting a type-in anyway. I'mean that's the big fear about hyphens right? "Oh no-one will ever "type-in" a hyphenated name".

If your going to have develop it to get traffic anyway with links and seo, might as well start with a "hyphenated" keyword laden domain name rather than a name with no keywords?


Take Mp3, very poular key word. Which are you buying for say $100 if you are looking for an mp3 name? Say These names have no links no traffic. You gotta develop them from scratch

www.mp3web.com
www.mp3-world.net
www.mp3-tech.org

The answer? There is no right answer. They are all worth the same. in my opinion because they all need the same work to develop and would recieve very few type-ins in an SE or a url.

Remeber in my examples, these names have no links no traffic. You gotta develop them from scratch


You would all take mp3web.com right? Me too. But the fact is that no names like mp3web .com are ever gonna be available for $100 if at all. If you eliminate hyphens from your request you would never see mp3-world.net in your replies. And you would probably not pay 100 for it if you did see it.

But any name can get near the top of google with the right promotion and the right keyword in its url.

Check out where those 3 name sit in google for the searched keyword "mp3"

My point is hyphen names with keyword(s) should not be overlooked if your starting from scratch anyway.

Thoughts?

[DeCal]

I dont think there is anything wrong with Hyphens. If the domain is developed then it can be worth a fortune and maybe as much, if not more, than the non hyphen if developed better.

As for values. Undeveloped non hyphens will still be worth more than undeveloped hyphens i think.

My 2 cents worth.....

[JuniperPark]

The answer:

.info (without hypens)

[Joe]

oh the age old discussion of hyphen names vs. non-hyphenated. I believe there is nothing wrong with developing a hyphenated name, SO LONG AS you also own the non-hyphenated version.

Hyphenated names may work fine on the net, with seo, Hosting, and other non-human variables. Unfortunately, with the human factor calculated in, hyphenated names lose their pizazz, credibility, and utility almost entirely. Take for example the difficulties with advertising a hyphenated web address using the radio as your medium. What about advertising via word of mouth? Try explaining to someone that your web address is not www.HomeImprovement.com, but is Home DASH Improvement dot com, and see if they remember to use the hyphen 10 minutes later. Even if advertising via print, or on television, the hypen is just simply too problematic. If you're lucky, most people will barely remember the keywords in your webaddress, let alone the hyphen and where to place it.

Again, unless you own both the hyphen and non-hyphenated counterpart, it is futile to develop just the hyphen alone. Advertising problems are just the beginning. What about your competition? How silly would it be to open a new shop up across the street from your major competitor, and your shop has no signage or lighting on the outside to compete with the neon lit storefront, large boulevard billboard, and the word of mouth (and/or other advertising) your competitor already enjoys. The point is, if you only develop a hyphenated name, and your competition owns and operates the non-hyphen, you will be losing a tremendous amount of business to your competition. Would you open a new business knowing from the beginning that you will be losing 50% or more of your market to someone else? Now take that scenario one step further and assume your non-hyphen counterpart has a registered mark with the Patent & Trademark Office that pre-dates your domain registration. Do you think that developing the hyphenated version will be somewhat confusingly similar to your competitor's mark? Do you think that will expose you to a possible UDRP action? Why would anyone go into anything knowing they have a huge chance of losing from the very start; losing customers, losing money, losing your reputation, losing your business and its name.

My advise is to not register and develop a hyphenated domain name, unless you already own (and/or developed) the non-hyphen of the same.

-Joe

[Jernet]

Ain't nothing wrong with the hyphen, however, I read somewhere that google will soon start penalizing sites that have more than 2 hyphens in the domain.

I have had a lot of success with:

tech-jobs.com
free-websites.com
magazine-subscriptions.com
ps2-cheats.com


I have a lot of hyphenated domains if you are interested.