Domains With a Dash

[jacobwissler]

My client owns two indentical .com domains, one has a - between the two words, the other runs the words together. Since the one without the - is much older, I am advising him to drop the newer domain, to avoid the Google Sandbox. Does anyone disagree?

[brian.mark]

I'd have to agree with your assessment. Just do a 301 from one to the other. No reason to get stuck in the sandbox when you can play along the entire beach.

Brian.

[cbp]

Agree.

The benefit to be gained these days from hyphenated domains is so small (?non-existant) its hardly worth the effort (if there ever was a benefit, anway). The spammers made sure of that ....

If you think about it for a moment from the SE pespective .... why would having a hyphenated domain make a website anymore important or relevant to a search query than not having one? Don't you think that SE's are smart enough to have worked this out by now?

CBP

[jacobwissler]

That is what I love about SEO, my competitors help me do the right thing for the client. You guys educated me, and when I run into something I am unsure of, I like to run it by you. In any other industry, people give bad advice to sabatoge the competition.

I sincerely appreciate the year of help. I have come a long way, thanks to WPW.

[brian.mark]

Oh, if we're competitors, then recommend a new domain every 90 days to keep the content "Fresh".

Just kidding. Oh, and I'd second that about thanks for the help. The more I post, the more I learn... mostly through people asking questions and me having to think about different situations than I normally have to deal with.

Brian.

[cbp]

The only problem is that your client might think you do not know what you are talking about as there are so many artciles out there advocating hyphenated domian names to "rocket to the top of Google" ... there are none really pointing out that the benefit is now very very small or non-exsistant.

The problem is articles on what used to work are still up - they need to be taken down so newbies do not get confused ..... just look at that thread we just had on search engine submission software --- that belief just will not die despite all the aticles and forum threads.

CBP

[ADAM Web Design]

A little heads-up: your client may stumble upon something like this, which I came across just last night:

http://www.google.com/search?sourcei...space+for+rent

On my results, the first one shows up as the following:

greater-toronto-woodbine-highway-7.commercial-office-space-for-lease.space4lease.ca/

Now that's some serious keyword stuffing, although I did actually find the result I wanted.

I haven't seen this for anything non-obscure yet (like office space for rent anywhere other than a specific GTA corner) so that would probably be the case for whatever your client finds.

[jawn_tech]

Agree.

I personally use hyphens in page filenames for human readability reasons.

When you get into domain name value however, a non-hyphenated name is worth more, should the domain ever get sold. If you have the pair though, or any other versions, all the better.