Double Hyphenated names......Theory

[schmidte]

Could you DN pros read this article I found and then comment on its content. It involves the use of double hyphenated domain names. Example xyz--xyz.com

http://www.digitalmoneymakers.com/backissues/25November2001.htm#domain

I've been playing around with the theory and found a double hyphenated domain name that gets:

Google=985,000,000 results
Overture=735,661 (However, if using the xyz--xyz.com example, it returns results for just a single xyz)

Most of you appraisers don't recommend one hyphen, let alone 2.

 

[Duke]

I read just a few paragraphs and came to the quick conclusion that the writer did not know what he is talking about. Google's proprietary ranking systems (which they change from time to time) do not boost sites based on the criteria this person says. Linking is much more important in the Google scheme. Just look up any subject and see how many top-ranked domains have no keywords in the title at all. From a domain reseller's perspective you are not going to make any money trying to sell double hyphenated names and you won't be getting any magic edge for your own sites that you develop.

 

[options]

Even more, if the name has no direct URL type-ins, you don't
have any advantage at all, regardless of name or its tld, except
maybe reselling value for some folks (for further reselling:weird: ).
There is 101 way to use keywords inside URL, but it doesn't bring huge points either.

 

[DotComster]

I do have some hyphen domains - will let them all drop.
Hopes that answers the question

 

[CoolHost.com]

Too tired to read the entire link, but I was under the impression that most, if not all, Registrars were prohibited/did not allow double--hyphenated domains any longer. I could be wrong, but it rings a (New Year's) bell.
I think they're worth very little, if anything ... to be honest!
Good Luck.

 

[Lord Baltimore]

"The Google.com search engine and the new Yahoo.com (which also uses Google) love domains that contain the searched for words in them, especially when they are separated by a hyphen, and give a large boost in ranking to those websites."

Wrong. Google doesn't give much emphasis on whether keywords are in the domain name or not.

I do own a good share of double and triple hyphenated names. They used to do very well in Google. However, since Google changed its algorithm last July I've been struggling to get my search engine sites back to the rankings they had before.

 

[system0]

i have to disagree
google puts a lot of emphasis on domain names - i know this from personal experience

the way i see it is
no hyphens - perfect for branding
1 hypen - less good for branding but some se parse the keywords better
2+hyphens - stay well clear

 

[options]

Originally posted by fonzerelli_79
i have to disagree
google puts a lot of emphasis on domain names - i know this from personal experience

IMO, Google puts a lot on emphasize on URL of the page, not domain name only.
Any sub-domain or directory would do the trick.

 

[DomainPairs]

I think that google strips out the hyphens before it starts using the name. If you check my recent purchase.

a-n-n-e.com against the venerable anne.com you will see that they each return the same result (leave out the .com of course)

 

[timechange.com]

What was initially allowed as a bug to the registration system - thanks NetSol - was domains starting or ending with a hyphen. It was quickly patched. Having two or more consecutive hyphens in a domain is still allowed.

 

[options]

Originally posted by DomainPairs
I think that google strips out the hyphens before it starts using the name. If you check my recent purchase.

a-n-n-e.com against the venerable anne.com you will see that they each return the same result (leave out the .com of course)

Yes, I have noticed your post about a-n-n-e and that surprised me. I started some playing and found out the following:

If words are separated by hyphens Google treats them as separate words.
If hyphens devide characters only, then they are concatenated
into a word. More then one character=end of concatenation/another word.
Very interesting.