The Other Search Engines

**r2d246** · 12-21-2005, 07:26 AM

Someone told me having dashes "-" in a domain name will not get as high a ranking anymore as too many people are using them between keywords to get placements? True or not?

**chrishirst** · 12-21-2005, 08:03 PM

crap!

How does "someone" make up this stuff?

**stOx** · 12-24-2005, 03:13 AM

Yeah its completely untrue. It's like saying google will punish people for using keywords. I don't know why so many people are so intent on scare mongering with regards to the amount of way google are out to screw you.

If anything you would be looked on favourable for making your domain name as specific to your content as possible.

**Harvey** · 12-24-2005, 08:29 AM

Actually, dashes can hurt you.

But only if they're made out of metal and particularly sharp, like one that fell off a sign. I learnt that the hard way...

**Basoone** · 12-26-2005, 04:57 AM

Well if thats true webmaster-talk.com will be punish...

**someguy** · 12-26-2005, 07:21 AM

This, like most things "heard from someone" about Google is tosh. I can see where it might have come from though.

Lots of spammers used to use domains like the-loans-and-finance-people-who-sell-loans-and-finance.com (slight exagerration) so that there keywords were stuffed into the URL as well as in any link text from sites that link from the domain name.

Because this got results for a while loads of spammers started doing it and the SERPs started looking crappy. Google then tweaked a few settings to make sure that this tactic wasn't being encouraged by their algo. At this point someone probably saw all those long-dashed-domains disappear from the listings, put on their tin-foil hat and started shouting that dashes in domains is bad for your positioning, when in truth it just doesn't artificially inflate it any more.

Sorry - that was an overly long answer to a simple question. My hangover is making me ramble a bit.

Alternative short anwer : Not true

**Kane Hill** · 01-02-2006, 09:03 AM

I have one domain with dashes in it. I hope all is cool. Rumors havent been true lately thou.

**vangogh** · 01-02-2006, 03:32 PM

Using dashes is fine. I had heard awhile back that overuse of dashes could get you flagged as spam. Probably for the reasons someguy mentioned above. I'm not sure if using too many dashes still sends up a flag though I doubt it, especially as it becomes harder and harder to find domain names.

I'm positive that using 2 or 3 dashes in your domain name is fine and will have no ill effects

**john546** · 02-08-2006, 10:37 PM

Yeah.

People you do use dashes and stuff it with keywords won't benefit that much unless they have many keywords, which will then give them a long domain name as show below, which will then make people forget what their domain name is.

Quote:

Originally Posted by someguy

This, like most things "heard from someone" about Google is tosh. I can see where it might have come from though.

Lots of spammers used to use domains like the-loans-and-finance-people-who-sell-loans-and-finance.com (slight exagerration) so that there keywords were stuffed into the URL as well as in any link text from sites that link from the domain name.

Because this got results for a while loads of spammers started doing it and the SERPs started looking crappy. Google then tweaked a few settings to make sure that this tactic wasn't being encouraged by their algo. At this point someone probably saw all those long-dashed-domains disappear from the listings, put on their tin-foil hat and started shouting that dashes in domains is bad for your positioning, when in truth it just doesn't artificially inflate it any more.

Sorry - that was an overly long answer to a simple question. My hangover is making me ramble a bit.

Alternative short anwer : Not true

**rehash** · 03-02-2006, 06:35 AM

more than 2 probably hurt

**etech-martin** · 03-07-2006, 05:45 AM

Completely untrue, having dashes in names does not hurt your site's ranking. Is there still an advantage in rankings by having dashes in names is unclear but it certainly doesn't harm your rankings if not improves.