Hyphens or not?

V

VTGal

New member
Do you recommend domain names be hyphenated or not? I personally do not like using hyphens (and have found many that do are spammy sites, though not all). I have heard, however, that search engine spiders pick up these sites easier. What are your thoughts?
 
Well it depends really. If you want to optimise for a keyword in particular then dashes are a good idea because the search engine spiders can easily identify the keywords. However, you have to remember users aren't used to typing dashes in URLs.
 
The single hyphen sometime looks good especially when the two word identify themselves well while they are in pair.
 
I think as long as you don't get crazy with them then I say use them. I wouldn't use more than 2 or 3 in your name. As mentioned most search engines are smart enough to detect the name if searched without the hyphens.

Chris
 
To my mind, a hyphen can be used if the domain name is not available and you want to use . com extension, for instance. As a matter of fact, use short and memorable, hyphenated domain names that are harder to mispell!
 
Hyphenated domain name sometimes looks well, so you may use it. It depends on the person's opinion. Yes or no. And that`s all.
 
I think it's okay to use it. As long as you don't type it like The-Worlds-Greatest-Web-Hosting-.com, then yeah that's a bit annoying. But something like Grays-Hosting or Host-Dudes, that's good.
 
If you have nice web site and lots of people there I believe that it doesn't matter what is your domain name, because each name is requried to be worked on
 
I think hyphens are a pain :) Google is smart enough to index and recognise the keywords unhyphenated. Also it's a pain telling people your domain and always having to mention "hyphen" in the middle of it.
 
I don't like hyphens really. The majority of the time if you get creative you can figure out a name that doesn't need a hyphen.

If you do choose to use one, you should make sure to not be silly-only one. If you are up to two hyphens then you really need to think about a new name, or a twist on the name you like.
 
My vote is no. Its tons confusing when people dont know what the hyphen is and when explaining it for example over the phone it takes forever for some to get the idea, unless of course you tell them its the phone number dash mark.
 
I think it would be much easier just to leave out the hyphens. This is just one more way to make people get the name of your domain all wrong and never actually get there. I have seen sites that had very similar names and the only real difference was that one had a hyphen in the name and one didn't. I would say when you check if this name is already in use also check if there's one like it with a hyphen. Then if you don't find either, skip the hyphen. I know if I was given a URL and didn't find it correctly the first time, the last thing I would think to add would be a hyphen.
 
Personally I'm not a fan of the hyphens and try to avoid them. However depending on how big your brand is, it's always good to register them (If your company name is not a single word).
 
Sometime you may find hyphenated domain good while you would like to join two potential keywords or already having a unhyphenated domain and won't like to miss same domain name with a hyphen. :)
 
Marks said:
Personally I'm not a fan of the hyphens and try to avoid them. However depending on how big your brand is, it's always good to register them (If your company name is not a single word).
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You know I think really that this is about the only reason there is to have a hyphenated name. As a brand, re-directing to your main site it would be good as a catch all to make sure you don't miss potential clients. Otherwise, you can work around issues and find ways to not use them.
 
Agreed, and I am not really sure how things will start to change when we have things like Asian domains. Will it divide the net? Certainly there will be a lot of things that I cannot access, but will that be bad for me, or do those sites not exist now?
 
It will get more interesting to set up .htaccess files, brute-force access deny rules, and spam filters.
 
It really depends on the particular name and availiability of the certain two word domain is certain TLD area.

However hyphenated domains are less preferrable.
 
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